Читать книгу Psalms for Skeptics - Kent Gramm - Страница 5

My heart is smitten

My heart is smitten. Something happened here,

inside, like a fire blown out with a bang.

Fell, turned green, passed out. It wasn’t a scare:

it was the real thing. The fat lady sang

like a locomotive. Me, on a cart,

an hour from dead. They put me on a table

and Jesus ran a wire into my heart,

opened a tube; stepped back into fable—

but I knew. He was there. He left a sign,

an artifact, a feather: I mean me.

I was immortal once upon a time,

bore frankincense; unique, I used to be.

But now I see I am a different self.

Survived for now, like everybody else.

my days are consumed like smoke

I can’t hear it, but I know it is ticking.

The days go by with nothing done. Like smoke

from a wispy fire—some dust-thin poems

going out before they reach the flickering

burn. Complain, why don’t I?—that would burn

still more of what is left, a paper tear

on a paper face in a paper year

in a paper space. Do they also serve

who only sit and waste? But let Indian

Summer come, the lazy childhood haze,

bracing fragrant taste of leaves in the smoke,

maples grateful to the all-gracious sun,

and remembering youth going where it goes

uncompleted, ripe, and smiling away.

I am in trouble

My heart is stricken: I will lose you all.

“Where I am going, none of you may go.”

What’s worse is where that is, none of us knows;

still worse, we all know. Whatever you call

it, it smells of flowers for awhile, dust

on the face, the mortician’s after shave:

what theological word rhymes with “grave”

that doesn’t tremble on the lip of “lost”?

One night the Lord came to me in my sleep,

looking handsome like David the Great King,

O Israel, whose look, more powerful

than horses, calls the universe like sheep

from particles, Eternity in flower;

and I was saved. And I will be waiting.

But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever.

The only comfort is the only comfort.

For what is hell but life eternal—that’s

it; just life eternal. Live forever,

enemy! Just you and your friends. Quiet.

Except for an exploding star now and

then, cosmos expanding like an apple

a thousand miles per second, the random

black hole gulping like a hollow drain, and

so on and so on. You will get damn sick

of your friends. Go see the fireworks every

night, all night; one long night. You will all wish

you were dead. That this satire of heaven

would have had a Maker. That the humming

in all that dark matter would mean something.