Canticle of the Lynx
XXV
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire:
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth..
Wake, o thou sleeper, I heard in the fugue of a night in illusion
Perched on a cliff overlooking the canyon: I jolted up hastened,
Sensing immediate cinerous air, and beheld with confusion
All of the carnage from yesterday caught in a blazed fumigation,
What was compared to a sacrifice now was arising in scorch-smoke,
Haunted and hallowed; I readied to leave but I froze in observing
What had aroused me from sleep with arrest and a likeness the Lord spoke
Equally dignified, humorless, dreadful and faintly unnerving,
Maybe a dream, but discernable not: for a lynx of immense size,
Greater than any behemoth was blocking the outward defile,
Regally eased on its haunches, inspecting with crimson, intense eyes
Flashing with injury, frozen, inaudible, watching a while,
Perilous smoke and the stench of Gehenna composing confection
Wafting up fumes and the sinister embers alighting its rapt eyes,
Till it announced, I have spilled much blood for the sake of election,
Running the Kidron in red as to grant sublimation to baptize,
Thence I have met with thee once and again to forgive thy offenses;
Whence hadst thou gone? and at first I mistook it for what I encountered,
What had tormented me much in Paran, to believe in my senses
That I was neither in dream nor in grief to be seeing a towered,
Troubling thing as a lynx of a size to demolish Masada,
Moreso it cut to my heart as it avered again its assertion:
Violence has gifted to thee these permanent wounds, a stigmata,
Wherefore thou ought reconsider thy baleful and foolish incursion
Seeking a stripe for a stripe, a thrill for an evil thou makest,
Thence I responded, I wonder, of kings and of prophets, forgotten,
Where might thou beest, o Lynx? if presenting itself to be greatest,
Neither as creature of monstrous but natural or’gins begotten,
Not as a spirit unclean from the earth, but the angel I once dreamed,
May it be known to me now; and the lynx with dispassionate presence
Averred, no creature I slew not breaking their teeth as their blood streamed,
Dipping my paws in their fountains, I swallowed their life in its essence,
They are as water before me, and having destroyed in my great wrath
Kings in my anger and nations in judgment, I fill up the waste-lands,
Crushing the heads of the many, I drink of the torrents on straight path,
Lifting my head and setting it not down while the day stands,
Why hast thou asked of me, child of man, of my what in confusion?
What it is (truly I say) I could not prove talent from penny,
Whether I dreamed or I witnessed a terribly vivid illusion,
Having partaken in many a grief in a year (so, so many);
Such was its baleful repose in declaring, or rather, inviting,
Question upon large question, in statements of fact inexpressive
Not in a judgment or even rebuke, or a contest in flyting,
Neither to criticize, neither to pillory, neither invective,
Nay, it had something of cold, coarse knowledge as old as the spread deep,
Older perhaps, and its ancient attention shall turn as it sees fit,
Focused on this man born dead, buffeted by smoke from the dead-heap
Smoking and crackling fierce, but disturbing it not in the least bit,
Therefore instead of answering, thence I proposed of a notion:
Might I, I asked, walk, till I have passed on the left? it addressed me,
Mortal, behold: for my left paw searches the depths of the ocean,
Thereso my right paw halts of the river in flow to the west sea,
All of the world dissipating as smoke in my sight, so I ask to admonish,
Whence dost thou figure to travel or lodge, to confound whereabouts hence?
Yea, in observing thy fear, I admit: I deny not that I astonish,
Wage war, not in delight but a fact as I AM, in the profound sense,
Which at the utterance tremored the ground and propelled me to fall down,
While the great Lynx yowled, Jerusalem! once but a walled town,
Gem of the Canaanites, twice disestablished and torn to the cinders:
Hear, o thou child of children, I reckon her glory with sinners,
Zion has nothing remaining, as naked as brides of the plunder,
Lo, she is buried, the Spirit descended with terrible thunder,
Saving the few and condemning the many, I judged and it happened;
This but a parable also for thee from a burial blackened,
Choking on dirt in Gehenna, a sacrifice bled for Azazel,
Though by the smile of motherly pity, apart from appraisal,
Skies were obscured by the image of birds for a meet celebration
After the truest expression of Zion, the Ark of oblation,
Rested again in the heavens with glory and power unrivaled,
That in the riddle thou wish to explain, as is pure, undefiled,
Listen with care for the Most High, pouring His Spirit of wonders,
Ending the world by His gradual sword this last of all summers:
Take as I give, and receive if thou dare, for I freely bestow it!
Fire belched forth from its mouth and with force and in short dissipation,
Vanished, and suddenly feeling anointed, however I know it,
Rose to approach it, but stopped with a step; in anticipation,
Glaring with mystical dignity, imaged the Lynx disappointed,
Follow, if followest thou, it declared, and it stood on its long limbs,
Turned and began on its walk, and I felt as a newly anointed,
That I am ought for its beckon, and thereby amid all the strong winds
Rushing along from the east as the hot smoke parted the way ’round,
Though in a moment the billowing gray of the fire redounded,
Taken from sight that Lynx, so I paused, and I wanted to lay down
Baffled and weary and suddenly drowsy, my vision confounded:
Whisked to a memory gap by a dizzying gift of a sleep sound,
Waking again in the dawn, as a shy light winked and unfolded,
Casting a shimmering glow on the canyon concealed by the steep mount,
Shewing a scorched, fume-dyed mass; corpses no longer were bloated,
Neither did any have stench, for a flame in the night had erupted
Molding their bodies together in dreadfully monstrous congealing;
Looking about, I discover I moved in my sleep undisrupted,
Having descended a stade, and it wrought so unnerving a feeling
Seeing the rope and the cistern Masada-directed so near me,
Like it were destined and known by my flesh to embark on destruction,
Though as I gaze to the summit I think of a different theory,
Where I observe an immense silhouette cause sunny obstruction
Forming a feline contour with a halo of solar declaring,
Roaring aloud, what thou hast decided, do quickly — with heeding,
Leaping aloft to a lower plateau, disappeared in a hurtle of daring;
What I had seen was a vision perhaps, but a one I was needing,
Seeing if Lynx spoke true, it anointed me, during the fire
Mentioning that I had washed in the Kidron as though it were Gihon,
Granted, although I was not a Davidic but Aaronite sire,
Might I be someone of merit? if this was enough to proceed on,
Maybe I reckon a proper predestined beginning, returning,
Chosen by God’s good purpose for something incredibly urgent
That he had sent that Lynx to bestow for my promptest discerning,
Finding vocation for blood-shed, whisked by a spirit insurgent
Toward Masada for pure retribution, a task I accepted
Clothed in the heaviest mantle, enjoined by a mighty decision:
Pacify Israel’s spirit; for soon I, unless intercepted,
Carry the sword of ancestral prestige to a frightful commission
Meeting with men of sedition to quell their ambitions for judgment
Crawling from under the world to arise in their fortress suspended
Breathing an exhale of longing, for blood and repaying begrudgment,
Wrath of a race at my heels, visitation for many lamented,
Whereas my clamber along rock-juts was profuse in its caution
What I intended, as God has intended, was not so pragmatic,
Diving again into cavernous earth’s cold, rumbled adoption
Blessed with the chill of unseen spring-heads, not purely somatic
That in my mind I was frozen as due to my new deputation,
That I be not as a fool in my venture, but rather an agent
Bound by an oath to the Lord for His wrath (mine wrath for sublation),
Reckoning victory over His foes as an instrument latent
Driven in earth, and arising from waters as virgin creation
Not to delight in my battle, but be sober in this execution
Swerving from evil as evil and averting from rampant temptation
Carrying something beloved by God to conclusion,
Lashed to my back as I take to descend on the passage chthonic
Not in a desperate act in the night but a kind of contrition
Taking the sword of Goliath, returned to the darkness: (ironic!)
Yet as I steady my grip, it is far from a glib supposition
Weighed with an anchor of sorts and ensured of my climb by a lone hand,
Feeling myself in the hands of my God but again unrelinquished,
Wishing I lived far fewer abstemious days in my own land
That I be fuller in flesh: for by falling my life be extinguished,
Though I am guided in spirit to place grips cautioned, unshodd’ly,
Taking my time with the air-wet hand-holds clammy and lichened
Strengthened by only a rope of unsound, splayed-fibrous motley,
Till I had reached hard bottom and greeted by cordyceps ripened
Ribboning out from decay and detritus polluting the chamber,
Likely unfortunate creatures who took unfortuitous tumbles,
Whereas their death has become life, even their fleshless remainder,
Which is reminding me when I had also my similar troubles,
Seeing a grimly reminder of what to expect as repayment
Might I be careless again and be slack from the gripe of the slipline,
Dower to fungus and vermin my body, belongings and raiment,
Joining a banquet enshrined in a plaster of gravel and whipvine
Sparse and of temp’rary stay in the desperate dryness’ impendence;
Holding unusual levels of moisture from desert oppression,
Soon shall the wilderness elements seep in the ventiduct entrance
Stealing away for the sake of the sun all the life in progression
Till it return to its bare state, She’ol in analogue statured
Scarlet and pale by its stones of ungenial epochs primeval,
Ordered from cosmic decree as a whole and in eons was fractured,
Much as our race was a man in the first but became as a people
Born in a unity, sundered and multiplied, falling untethered,
Splitting as rock by a mighty calamity, though it is specious,
Since we are one in a sense still: plants in a garden, unsevered
Where we may flourish, but lest I purport of a Hellenized thesis,
These long fissures exist and are not an illusion of nature,
Rather our God has decided the breadth of our beings and being,
What is in common and not, and denial denies our Creator
Structured the world as we know it by being and living and seeing:
That it is real and is also contingent and otherwise might be,
That it is good in its principle, though it is not as expected;
These are the immanent things I can grasp of our Lord the Almighty
Through contemplation, observing to God made things are trajected,
Even denuded and hardly observed slabs such as are scattered,
Placed with precision in these dank tunnels, defiled by men’s hand;
Not so dissimilar maybe from catacombs, both have been shattered,
Struck in destruction for construction, removing its shrapnel, dispensed sand,
Fragmented matter for storing the remnants of monuments greater
Both in their dignity owed and their image reserving their model,
Patterned from ages unheard, made well by their ancient Creator,
Both the foundations of earth divelled by the firmament bottled,
Also the statuesque man from primordial garden deported,
Sharing his traduced split icon of deity through all his ages,
Gifting the lees and the dregs of corruption his nature comported,
Formless and guideless pluralities, having collecting his wages,
Death, (o the sting of his Fall!) and for which he abandons his offspring,
Numbered with these crushed spurs, pale sediments crunching with each step
Marking a passage, a portal to sullen an otherw’rld crossing
Dredged from suspended abyss by a lost, antediluvian precept
Theretofore flooded, and now so returned with the changing of seasons,
Filling with water unbitter, providing Masada with chalice
Sourced from the realm of the dead, and from Hades its hideous regions
Rising to cisterns in networks complex, well-fit for a palace,
Feeding the summit by weavings of rough shale corridors, hand-hewn,
Tectly suffused with the eerie decant of a rumble unearthly
Found in all caves at a depth; in descents as convex as a sand-dune,
Silted at joint by the sparse underground floods running covertly
Toward Masada, I move to its flow, an avenger of hist’ry
Wielding a sword of poetic ostension, of Philistine-reaping,
Wit unconcerned, chalk shredding my sore feet, bloodied and blist’ry
Halting me not as I gain the advantage, methodic’ly creeping,
Maybe as reckoned among the deceased, but of spry constitution,
Hale as I ever was even before I was gathered from Hades
Keeping to vigilant, sober awareness and meet resolution —
Quoting a prophet, the waters shall thresh from the River Euphrates,
Thence shall the ventiducts soon be reopened for season’ly closed flow
Cheering the dessicate skin of the earth of an eminence yearless
Haunted by lights from above, ventilation pouring morose glow
Guiding my steps, I recall it is wisdom to never be fearless.
encountering a Lynx • a spiritual message
awakening anointed • fire scorched the battlefield
seeking recompense from Sicarim • creeping into suspiral passage