To An Old Philosopher Of Religion On Easter Morning Poem by Warren Falcon

Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end. - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him...I am merely trying to express for the reader the principles to which he appeals when he smiles. - Georges Santayana

A penny for a wet tongue.
All's a seeming washed in blood.

Old Friend, I've been reading of Zen,
the Death Poems, and from the Middle East,
Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

One can still lift a head up
amongst the stars while
swatting at flies counseling

'be silly lumps in solidity'

'not yet, not yet, ' they contradictorily bray

The whole of matter, the Matter,
is summed when one withered heresiarch**
on desert knees prayed

'Here's breath for you'

Yet in odd limbo there
always trail reluctant murmurers,
each day a scrape in the tents.

Mistaken people thinner than
scripture loudly make and stake
claims of deity in long meander.

Still all's a seeming washed in blood.
Of that hung up crowd I am forced to flee.

I think of you often, your books,
the signifying smile, the twitch
of thought, the eye patch a black
Job with halting speech, the good
eye the tears the well where, old
now, I yet hang up my life harping
on and on in old Zion song, a dry
tongue still clinging to the roof
of my mouth.

**heresiarch - a noun that refers both to the originator of heretical doctrine, and to the founder of a sect that sustains such a doctrine