Day 404 May 7 2017 Resurrection Easter

 John Updike, Writer, Poet

"Let us not mock God with metaphor" Updike says,
let us leave Him alone; might Elijah save Him;
yet us he cannot save from the Last and Biggest Sleep?
Twitter philosophies.

The temple's veil torn from top to bottom, in twain,
the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and graves were opened;
and the bodies of many saints asleep were raised;
Matthew Twenty-seven.

And before this Lazarus was raised from the dead,
perhaps he waited Easter with the many saints
raised on Friday, waiting Sunday, waiting, waiting;
Easter's entanglement!

Our life is not despair like a prayer's chance in hell:
Resurrection waits not upon the cantor,
nor the M.C. to tell it what to say, but runs
ahead, fireman and bell!

 --

Matthew 27 records the resurrection of many saints 3 days before the Resurrection of Jesus. I have spoken to many religious who are not familiar with the passage. It reminds me of the beginning of the series Les Revenants, wherein at the moment that the dead characters were revived, one of many butterflies in a lepidopterist's showcase flutters,
 

the glass of the case explodes outwards, and the sole butterfly flies away!

--
refer to http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2015/11/les-revenants-reviennent.html


(better a bit late than a little never....)

Fast Day 302 March 16, 2013 {My Father's Cabinet Has...}

My Father's Cabinet Has... Many Earthenware Cups

My Father's Cabinet Has...

The leavening is gone
from our house;
it has been burned;
dust to dust –
my father’s gold cuff links,
and collar studs;
the idle socks and shoes,
the atrophy of his belts,
cords, laces –
things to tighten,
things to cinch…
ungirded.

Some of us are steel
cooking ware:
and are kashered
by boiling –
Yet I am earthenware:
terra cotta,
and even with bright glaze
am of a porous nature:
no soaking,
in water hot,
in water cold…
suffices.

Incomp’rable dangers
that proceed
from the morning news
this year –
we gather Easter icons -
dolorosa -
in stabat Mater sketchbooks
painted to His holy death:
sounding brass,
tinkling cymbals…
saxophones
still rage!


--
notes

Easter and Passover approach this year.

kashered  -   cooking utensils are made kosher by various methjods of cleaning.
dolorosa   -  via dolorosa, the way of the cross during Passion Week.
saxophones  -  I believe St. Paul would have loved the saxophone.

stabat Mater -  a hymn from the Stations of the Cross during Lent

--

Fast Day 253 April 8 2012 {Spring Plantings}

Spring Plantings

Susan planted pansies yesterday
and I moved them in the evening
to protect them from the freeze
although hardy plant they be;
the full moon shined upon them,
and the full moon frost cuts deeply
in the spring.

I stood and watched that fulgent star,
like Hesiod stood within his vineyard
together with his brother, Perses,
in their childhood, Demeter bless’d,
and like them waited as Pandora
opened a jar of corrosion
to melt gold.

So we plant our flowers in hard times,
awaiting life’s newness once again:
like old vines who have sent down roots
deep in the soil, we are pruned again,
but await the graft of spring’s new
scion wood into our wounded souls:
Easter time!

--
notes

The references are to Hesiod's Works and Days, a poem from ancient Greece.

Demeter - great Mother, source of wealth and growing things; associated with the Golden Age.

Pandora – according to Hesiod, opened a container of evils, ruining the perfection of the world; a reference to the present less-than-perfect state of affairs.

scion wood – wood to be grafted onto existing stocks

We have faith in a return to goodness after winter, after the end of a golden age, after we have been cut and wounded.

Fast Day 248 March 3 2012 {Orpheus Ascending MLK}

Orpheus Ascending MLK

On Mardi Gras our sweets are lifted
onto floats of other-worldly panoply
where black Orpheus resurrects Eurydice
and sweeps her off her feet again
under the frown of Death,
who conspirator with God above
did punk Job with wiles combined
methodically graceful and deceit;
we again wend our way Sisyphaean
up the slopes of our work-a-day lives.

Everyone knows who Orpheus was;
singing in the church, corner of Trumbull
and Martin L K Boulevard,
by Barnabas Center, righteous miracle man
who cures blind eyes of abandoned windows
and turns the heat back on for widows;
his monuments being fruit trees in abandoned lots
facing the warmth of the southern sun
where he dies late in the year, and is interred
in the forcing bed of his new resurrection!

--
Spring around the neighborhood of Trumbull and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Detroit; promises of resurrection; I go to the Dentist nearby.

Fast Day 41 March 14, 2008 {Looking Forward to Easter 2008}

Nero's Domus Aurea or Golden House reconstructed at Building Virtual Rome

Looking Forward To Easter 2008

When archaeologists of old delights
will find the ruins of all our ancient kisses
and delve into the warrens of this age
and see the mazed foundation our lives:
reconstruct the murals
replumb the obelisk;
and roof the halls of Herculaneum,
and place the bodies at table encaustic.

Shall they then find our candled nights of love
that sparkled like the radyant rising sun?
and drape the scenes with purple porphry sheets
lest we old pagans contravene their faith?
free us from this prison,
and we shall fly away!
and going up to Galilee to see
anew the universal pulchritude!

Nero's Domus Aurea at present