A Peace Beyond Both Time and Space

Come, let us transcend both time and space.

I hear: "You come from a different world.

You need not conform.

Be as you are, that will suffice."

I nod. Raising my hand, I slowly point towards

The yellow and white criss-crossed keys,

And I whisper: "That is my flag."

For I am neither American nor European

Nor Australian nor Asian

Nor African:

I am Yours.

Church-whispering Your name again and again,

I find a peace beyond both time and space:

I know You are there in the Eucharist.

I feel Your eyes, Your smile on me.

You owe me no proof. I owe you all.

With Your grace, I transcend the calendar,

The days, the clock, the hours.

Talk to me, talk to me about timelessness.

The swinging pendulum of the grandfather clock sneers - 

But Time the tyrant seems to be a myth -

Why measure the hours and the days,

When all we need is to do Your will.

Remember mortal man, forward in time

Is not always forward in love and life

So come, let us transcend both time and space:

Only this moment, this now, matters, and it is Yours

Only here matters, and it is Yours.

O that we could be freed

From the tyranny of the tedious

Hours, minutes, and seconds

And just be as we are, as children of God,

Exist doing God's will, in every passing moment

expression

the way we express

what we express

in this modern era

of phones, data, and ai

is nothing short of

    fra

        gmen

            ted

oceans

my words which are but 

a trial and error description of reality

will never be like yours,

which flow into oceans of infinite, 

life-giving meaning

my words are imperfect.

yours, God, hide unending 

oceans of meaning

In the thirtieth year of my life

In the thirtieth year of my life,

After the skies were split,

And the heavens had spoken,

I followed my will out into the desert,

Where I fasted and prayed for forty days.

Alone in the wilderness with my prayers and my thoughts,

I who have existed before existence,

Thought of you my friend,

Long before you existed.

In your kindness think of me now,

Who wait for you, "a prisoner of my own love",

In the tabernacles of a million churches

Fire in the wilderness

Fire in the wilderness, and all those

Beatuous desert flowers you had looked after so carefully

Gone, incinerated, in the blazing flames.

Those verses you had strung

Equally carefully as poems,

Incinerated in the test of time

And unappreciated in the cacophony of attentions

In this modern world.

What next? What next?

Whatever are you going to do next, darling?

What does a poet do when his

Poems go unread?

Does he give up speaking to an unlistening world

Or does he carry on as a prophet,

Putting out sombre words of life and death,

Just as they are, 

Without beautifying, rhyme, or meter

For anyone who would care to listen?

Am I to blame for writing of life and death

And not of romance and roses?

For I write of Thee, God, and hopefully for Thee,

And what we Thy children truly long for

Is a life after death with Thee

Afterword:

Fire, fire, fire, in the wilderness of my heart

And after the flames of pain and suffering

Have done their work,

All that I want now

    is

        God

   

where do you call home

and they asked me,

conversationally,

where I called home

and I realised in a sudden shock,

that I did not belong here,

nor there, nor anywhere

and I whispered in reply,

as if in a dream:

"God."

the sidewalk

like the fallen, crushed autumn leaves

in the middle of the sidewalk,

trodden into dust by men of dust and clay,

before it is swept into the void -

us

before the autumn,

before we depart,

have mercy on us,

Christ Jesus,

for only in Thee we find transcendence

from this mortal frame.

have mercy

lest we allow ourselves

to be swept away from endless life