Читать книгу The Sunrise Liturgy - Mia Anderson - Страница 11

Ashes to ashes, snow to snow.

The ash is a species threatened by the emerald ash borer.

Ottawa is soon to be denuded of trees by 50%. Ash-bound ourselves

we are ‘bracing for massive destruction of forests in Ontario and Québec

in the next fifteen years.’

Imagine this shoreline without Isolde

Imogen

Morgan and

Beatrice Tristan

Anselm

Seraphim and Gregory

home-brew christenings for ash trees whose arabesques chisel mosaic chips

into the cloisonné of sky against the bit of fleuve we call home.

How do without? How not this

mosaic air on a G string, this gut-bark and blank?

its seeds of snow horizontal on the vector of wind

orient express pit-stopped by ash? this kind of

morning light ‘new every morning’ with ‘the love our wakening

and uprising prove’?

What has Love got to do with it

the blinking out of another of Love’s species?

Did he who made the lamb make thee? Or did we make the emerald threat?

The maker of alle thing

sees with a bigger scan than I can pretend to.

Take off your sandals, this is holy ground.

The Church is its members future and past, with the present :

the communion of saints.

The Earth is its members future and past, with the present :

the communion of species.

Does the Head of the Body have a choice? Or does he,

did he, give it to us?

Is it something we said? We apologize.

Where do we sit at ease — if ease is allowed — in the present; where

is the still small voice, the true north of this turning, this

world, your cell that teaches you everything?

How put the rest back into the rest of it? Bared of limbs

whose amputation from Love’s body bares our souls’ grievance, how

best comport the limbs left us?

How bear it

unbearing them?

What you don’t know does hurt you.

Imagine knowing.

Imagine denominations of trees, confessions of mammals

covenants of birds and

sects of lost insects, vestigial limbs of Church

withering joyfully away

that they may be One.

The scientific writing’s on the wall ready for dream analysis :

this is not forever. Ashes to ashes.

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and lasses must

As chimney sweepers come to dust.

When God shall be all in all, it is home that we’ll be — ash and all.

Imagine knowing that.