05 Nov Memoir of the Gerasene Demoniac
Posted at 19:22h
in Poems
As the evening gathered its rain and wild winds swept
And the nymphs of light furtively withdrew and crept
My repetition for the night in its salt-stricken refrain
Accompanied the clinking of iron on iron chain
The hush of bare beech the only sound for my dance
Of painful contortions I slowly stagger in my trance
Under spell of quiet darkly circumstance
To tangled notes of the willow-tree harp
To the blows of stones so swift and sharp
In the darkest of places where dead go to steep
My fill of myrrh and sweet rot chill me to sleep
Among the burial flock’s manger I rest my head
Puddles for drink and fallen branches for bread
A lone Gerasene who walks this glade of the dead
By the tides of the wood crashed in on that day
And some sons of Abraham stood in the cave entryway
As I lifted my eyes and gazed in their direction
I felt a cord winding itself tight in my midsection
Made taut in primal fear or some memory hidden
Of Him among them I felt silently bidden
A hiss escaped my lips in sluggish fear and taunt
And asked the Man that which He could want
The wild ripple of the leaves turned to the tame
When the first among them asked for my name
The feeling escaped me of what the question meant
And from my belly lifted a howling of malcontent
Bursting and twisting about like the iron I had bent
Rising out of my mouth came a gargling sound
Tasting like silver dross and spilling upon the ground
Horribly familiar yet nonetheless foreign to me
In flickering disjointed embers of a grave Jubilee
Reeking of writing ink and running as acidic lime
Thousands of wind-chimes ringing at the same time
I sputtered and spit while I trying to speak
And I uttered in a voice framed fractured and weak
Of the Legion of shadowy things lived inside of me
And this Man that had come from the other side of the sea
Parted my waves and gazed past the walls of mist
In the parts of me too broken to shout or to resist
Through my throat of a voice discordant polyphonic
Where I teemed in my depths of the writhing demonic
Suffocated in thorny figs and in scorched sprigs of yew
And yet the passing word of this Man might subdue
Bleak gold spirits of flawed perfection within you
In a moment from my mouth came dull metal strings
Two by two they intertwined into horrifying things
And by the hem of the wood were two herds of swine
To which the dark lashed upon and laid in line
Two by two the swine swallowed up the demons within me
And splintered the posts into two headed towards the sea
And two sounds escaped their mouths in their run
A debased squeal of pain and an enigmatic one
Of the two the latter soon drowned out the other
Two swineherds startled looked at one another
And the two herds charged down the steep of the green
Trampling it down and leaving every patch clean
Barren from two lines of hooves beating it full
Following the manic Legion’s inevitable pull
Toward their crash on the banks of their greater graves
Two by two their destruction met deep under the waves
Sloshed forth in a march to a most orderly demise
Suffocating their breath and muting their cries
Until two by two their possession had turned to peace
Until two by two their possession had turned to peace
Furious stomps of demonic vigor splashing and cease
Swallowed into the open maw of the scornful sea
From my mouth a final strand snapped and had left me
When the final two in wild rush dipped into the blue
An echo spiraled forth as the spirits passed through
In the wake of the moment it was only us two
I woke into the dream coming from a nightmare
Like the dead I was abandoned to live in the tombs there
And the Man spoke and from my mouth poured every terror
Released this thrush whose wings held fast in a snare
My wings disheveled but my throat open to sing
In the white poplar trees and in beauty of everything
And after the rebuke of a proper Gerasene welcome
The sons of Abraham laid in pine toward Capernaum
To the Man from whom comes a light above light
I swore to give Him my heart, my soul, and my might
That He should possess my flesh, His bread of His yield
He has risen me from death as wheat from His field
Softest honey from His lips flowed and stopped frozen
“Many are called,” He said, “but few shall be chosen”
And until He could gather the world to His body
To remain here with Gentiles on this side of the sea
“All will be reconciled and all offered salvation
First I must deliver from themselves the firstborn nation
Go to your people and proclaim what has been done
‘Hear O Gerasenes there is one God and He is one’
And call to others to know of Israel and of the Son.”
A descent of the night blanketed the juniper trees
And calm go the wildest waves of the inland seas
Quiet a day was every day since dark expelled
In the promise of promise a forbearance held
For by the word of a Man procured my release
I sired a family who all lived in His steadfast peace
To share in my vision the world that shall never cease