Canticle on the Dectrarchy
XL
After these things, God tempted Abraham,
And said to him: Abraham, Abraham.
And he answered: Here I am.
Dust from the foot of a man on his journey to promised-him nations
Where he would purchase himself land first with the money of grave-sites
Death for him bought much, death could so grant well-meaning relations
When he would bury his wife, in the fragile display of the cave-lights
Found him the commerce of death and the mercy of mutual fearing,
That he would stake in the land his descendants would conquer a price like,
Bones and the soil to flesh, and so willing he sat by the clearing
Near but a lone tree, drowsy from horror at being a christ-type
When he would see the Messiah to come with his chariots burning,
Son of the man and Davidic in Name, but a minor concession:
This is the Chosen, the frightful selection of God in His plaintives
Looking eternally to men for the Heir of the promise discretion
Which He intended for One from the start, no terrestrial natives
Find Him to fault for the rapt overturning of older to truer,
Whereas the simmering Spirit of Truth in Meggido, parading,
Makes for Himself all the world, and He fashions it twice, it is newer:
What could be said for the winter in spring? if the tides shall be fading,
Fires decline in their tendrils until it is naught but an ember,
When it is over the senses forget with the cru’lest indiff’rence
Papering over the past as it falls to the man to remember,
What is no more, ah! the past has no presence and present subsistence,
Wounds can be healed but are scarred; and the injury then is collated,
Given account in a manner of speaking, and vernal resplendence
Hears it no longer, for cold has withdrawn as the winter abated
When it has come to the heat of the sun and its fulsome transcendence,
That if the age of Messiah would meet us with bloody ordealing
After a while we witness the old-sun charioteering
Upward in heaven, the course right, though I have delicate feeling —
Tense as I peer into places I ought well not to be peering —
Where I have spied on a Tower the marvelous heavenly captain
Leading the wandering stars to their places with assiduous arrows
Finding their marks, but to see it myself, if it ever shall happen?
Few of the righteous can fit into Abraham’s cavern of barrows,
Barring extravagance owed to the righteous for rendering just deeds,
Comfort in finding our father to bring us embrace is sufficient;
What could be greater than this? for a man to behold, as he must needs,
One who has settled to earth and created him, seen him omniscient,
That from his own flesh sprang new bones, to accomplish his mission,
Raising but two generations of good men works the repairing
Meant for the world, but can such be determined? for man in decision
Makes for his children and sons quite little, believable faring;
Man is a morsel, no measure indeed, for he walks, unexpected
Down his intrusion of cosmic ascent, and dissents integration,
Hating the world as he hated himself, for he felt he detected,
Hidden beneath the mysterious surface a grand meditation
Wishing him well, and demanding a price; and his mental retrieval
Finds him enraged, for he consented to a living supernal
Lest he be ruled! and he wishes to rather be lordly, coeval,
Rathering not but the service of God, but a kingdom infernal
Lording the ashes in spirit, the worm in his cardiacs writhing,
Tunneling deeper for ends I could never explain, for I home-went
Once as a boy, and I knew by her vacant expression — confiding,
Seeking my peace from my mother was useless — for down in her bones rent,
Losing a child excused all her elses, and now in effacement
Mother perceived in the darkness the sight of the worm, it was scarlet,
Moving with mouths in their speech, it was mounted and roamed for debasement
Carrying stony a woman, a courtier, queen and a harlot,
Idol of idols, and this was the worm in the human condition;
Colored her eyes with the black dread flushing a shade of the lee-side,
Drowned with the river of memory wasted and workings’ rendition
Which all revealed to her frightful a truth, for a life is a free ride,
Costing us nothing, but thus we cannot choose which destination;
Abram I know was assured to the same things, hemmed in with marsh-sights
Gathering camp at Haran, the Negev, or Moriah’s temptation,
Faced with the veil in between us and God, who in darkness of harsh lights
Ever defines this dread word: mystery; intellect totters,
Spirit descends on unworthiest flesh, and the limit, the shaping,
Brings about each thing, which Abram, by Babylon waters
Wept for his children, the artifacts hammered and patterns for draping,
Swallowed up whole by the serpent of old and his legions of dragons
Mandibles gaping, and bastards who generate multiple nations
Circle his heirs who defend and are slain in their tents and their wagons
Knowing no pity nor quarter, their deaths of no great aspirations
Other than Abraham knowing their coming, and having so gazed on
Abraham knew in his bones of the terrible years in enslavement
Till it was come, for the call he had heard was a Canaan liaison
That his descendants should also be heard, and their future arrangement
Meant he was first but unlikely the only, the sun in its blinking,
Hidden-by-cloud cloak watching him weep by the River so deep-run,
Even so back then, bloody and guilty of bodily-sinking,
Where from his loins so would join these, Abraham felt he would keep one;
Which would be blest, he considered, who carried the promise to child?
Such would be which he would honor above all, to terror of burnt doom,
Heaved on Moriah to valorous cause and so, once reconciled,
Man could be blest as a whole on the vine of a Man of no cursed bloom,
Bearing no sick fruit; here on unclean-like soil and grasses
Running the length of the East, seat next to an orchid with wilt-stem
Bent in the waters, distressed by the flow, it broke with its lashes
Flying away to the sea, and a ritual knife with a hilt’s gem
Sat by his side, he had used it so nearly an angel’s refusal
Only could stay him, but such was his trust and his godly detachment,
Only perfected aside these rivers, with piscal profusal
Going with current and Abram, against; none waters are stagnant,
Though he had trusted, surpassed constellations beyond his surmisal
Feeding his trust with the nectar of works and the promises prior
Starting his days new each time, therewith the solar reprisal
Watching his changes from rising to work and until he’d retire
Back to his camp, and his servants returning to tents with their lanterns
While he opened the flap to his own with a tentative smile
Seeing his wife at the end of the day, and her lips, the enchanters,
Curl’d to a mutual joy, and the camp he arranged all the while
Filled with the same great joys for all thrust into risk, into danger
When he began to respect that promise, the people all streaming,
Halted and ready, behind their master and countenanced ranger
Trailing the echo of something recovered in numinous dreaming
That he would never observe straight, only, alike to purloined purse,
Take from the share of another with deft hands quick to the halter,
Abraham saw to it, taking no joy in the worldly possessions or coin-curse,
Whence he could keep to a true faith never considered to falter
Even approaching so ghastly a deed scribes froze on its stringents,
Thinking it mighty lugubrious mentioning such as the manful,
Masterful monument faith should require, the hate of contingents
Next to the needful eternity, that in his life he would handle
Over again and again by the means he could find disagree’ble
Toward the purpose surpassing it all; each situation, distressful,
Found him prepared, and the wells he had dug to replenish him needful
Equally Abraham gave to his rivals with boulder and vessel
Knowing the Lord, not Abraham’s own self, gave him his column
Marching to meet him his int’rests, so whether in province paroch’al
Where he sojourns, or the shadows of pyramids ancient and solemn
Signaling pedigree, back when Set-beasts roamed and were vocal
Braying about from the work of their herders in field and in pastures
When God wanted to hear, but to rest did He put their locution,
What can be found of it now? and no men by the will of their masters
Compensates well for the loss or arouses a worthy solution;
Abraham saw these, speaking to priests in peculiar grammar
Known to th’m only, a prophet indeed and a priest, whose compliance,
Yea, his obedience curing his mind from the echoing hammer
Which could defile the temple of mind with the spurious science
Thinking and tinkering thoughts, the allure in the power endearing
Granted by knowledge, the grasping, the reach of the hand in its sky-bound,
Wont comprehension, the reckless desire or lust persevering
Which is the opposite then of the priest’s heave-off’ring from high ground
Toward the Maker who deigns all the world to a human trajection,
Not for his pride or a placid dominion, but governing mightful,
Meek and considerate, that in the sacrifice once with bisection
Abram confronted the sadness of killing a beast, for if rightful,
What can be said of the Lord in recalling us back to our founding,
Dust of the earth to the dust of the earth, if in this it is pleasing
God shall decree it, the Name is the changeless and infinite grounding
Drawing the world to Himself in a free way, not as by seizing,
Rather by welcoming, calling and loving to lawfulness gainful
Where His creation arises in dawn to percipient weather;
That is the moment he, Abraham, knew it unbearably painful
Being a shepherd, to love one’s flock is to suffer together,
Wincing a wink at the slaughter of beasts for a feast’s preparation
Knowing the creature had trusted him fully for help and refreshment,
Killing the creature the point of the trust, the designed calibration
Which so occasioned the meeting of man in his mortal enfleshment
Toward the beast of his flock, but no less did he genuine-cherish
Those he begins with intention to kill; the analogy’s smallness
Shows us a ghastly reflection I knew in the times I could perish
Where I was immanent there to the Name who my living banalness
Trembled before, for quotidian man is in need of correction
Always and daily, for caught in the snare of the cares he is tasking
Man can be troubled indeed, and the Lord in His living inspection
Humbles the head of the man, and so faith is no glorious-basking,
Neither a spurious thought, it is tested and previous in trials
When we shall stand in the stone of our grave-tombs nowhere to cower
Seeing His visage in death, and His angels turning in styles
Round us about in the sight of the dread-white marvelous Tower —
Call it thy hour — so no man can dispute Him, for none are so haughty,
None are so lawless before Him to say He has rendered mistreatment
Since He is measure and weight, for to what can be said to be godly?
God is the shekel the sanctum submits, the exalted concretement,
Taking the breath to its rest in Himself so the body shall vanish;
Abram appalled at his king who would build, no, would summon a tower
Built up against high heaven, a substitute meaning to banish
God from His own place, though can the Lord, who is being and power
Ever depart? for is this Lord ever a place or location?
Neither, the Name is a pairing of lights, the celestial fire
Cra’kling eternally, heard in the quietest air’s collocation,
Rampant with life, and the splitting of sacrificed beasts of our sire
Abraham found him in horror for covenant, called to the tragic
That all the tragic be shown to be false, for an ordin’ry fellow
Makes for himself but a story of life, scores musical magic
Over his deeds in his mind for his ev’ry disjoinder and bellow
Comes to his mind in the sequence it means to him more than the part-sum
Happens event to event, and so Abraham, telling his story
Thought it again to the deeds of a covenant, chastened to start one,
Saying, I knew it would cost me, not as if God would deplore me,
Rather a cost is the sign of the will, and I wish Him my bast’on
Over all else, and he took from the clutter of stores for the scull’ry
Each of the beasts he required, dividing their bodies and fastened,
Laying the sacrifice out with the blood still scabbed on his cutl’ry
Wherein the lights supernatural pass in between in succession,
Furnace and torch, and the splitting of beasts repurposed for glowing,
Rapidly spinning ellipses, unknown in their path and aggression,
Choosing the content of choices, a river uncoursed in its flowing,
Carving the land to its lively, ah! living! designs with its crashing,
Swept animation of self, for it rises and falls to its current
Self-introspected, the only domain to the entryw’y flashing,
This door flashing and sturdy, illusory, biding and verdant
Vanishing when it is time, and the river of life as it sprung up
Moves to another location, its brook there also as placid,
Wherein, again, it determines its motions as much as the sunup
Comes by command of the sun, for the records ignore if he fasted:
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs lacking transgressions to cover,
Much as Manasseh has prayed; but to them was no record of pretense
Giving the waters of life or the Spirit on waters did hover,
Though each man had a confident conscience and suitable defense
Knowing his works were from God and so far from imperfect or worthless,
Though none earned in the face of his God but the heart to respond Him
Thanking the Lord for His gift to create him for powerful service,
Whereas the man in his hubris or vanity must be despondent
That Absolute rests deep in his self; for in the Babylon breezeless,
When it is late in the day and no flight can be found by a swallow,
Humid constriction confines us our soul, when motion is needless,
This is the state of the petulant soul, it is grimfully hollow
Which so recalls to the mind that coal-black sin atavistic
Dragging us down from the moment of birth to consumption by malice,
Wherewith malicious intent is an injury, which as a mystic
Abraham saw and abhorred, not though he were brutally callous,
Rather he felt it with stinging reprovement his Majesty’s hatred
Toward the falling, the fallen of men, for the burial mentioned
Made him observe what debts should accrue to the wants of the fated
Downw’rdly driven, a beast in a covenant badly conventioned
Weighed to the age of the slaughter shall here be completed — accomplished!
God in provision has deigned to us veils to His Name in a broad walk
Which we can never perceive if our radical sin’s unabolished,
Where in the dampened perception of falseh’ds and yearnings in cross-talk
Satisfies nothing, for nothing by grasping the object of craving
Enters the subject, so watch — so I watch, contemplation my tonic
Said he, our father in faith, as he turned in his hand the engraving
Which he would silently ward from her tomb to all forces daimonic
Marked by the compass, the symbol of binding, with power to banish
Granted from here the coincidence twain these opposites landed
Evil to good and deficient to perfect, for evil shall vanish,
Perishing fast by the light of the new day dawn, it is branded,
Marked for destruction, and those who are saved on their countenance fertile,
Opened to new generation by heart, for the Law is a lesson —
Caustic, but true — for the Law is in men, their example can curdle
Over the years by their sons and their daughters in rubric-confession
Since it is these who shall bury the man, it is flesh to whom flesh falls,
Thus it is husband to bury his wife, and so Abraham standing
Where he had buried the bone of his bone, to the pigeon’s distress-calls
Slit to the gizzard, he bloodied his hands for a pious demanding,
Wanting to hear God speak by His Word in so doleful a season,
Whispering, Speak to me, Lord! and he trembled and greatly perspired,
Abraham walked with his God, who I estimate spoke to his reason,
That He replied, I have given to thee much more than required.
the burial cave • divine election
the worm of rebellion • faith and death
God seals the covenant • a final Word