St. Maleu sequence
Saint Maleu Sequence
I.
Once we were all tourists
seeking on foot,
by horse or boat,
by plane and camera,
some other place -
by book, museum, library,
some other time.
But now “Was it Portugal or Ponsonby? ”
we ask. “Is everything on tape? ”
I too once wandered everywhere,
by foot and thought,
in marriage and in war,
searching for other minds
and freedom from my own.
One thing only I have learned,
kneeling inhuman on and on,
hearing the soft lament
that others left for me,
at Gavrinis,
among its dreaming fingerprints
carved 5,000 years ago -
to raise this tiny index,
regard its intricate design
and ask it write a single line
to touch a silent lip
5,000 years from now.
II.
Think no more, dear mind;
the dissected brain has lost your delicate design
somewhere along its neural paths.
I loved you so for winning Plato’s praise.
But now I rise towards the Druid’s angel frame,
where your sweet categories fade and merge
into that One, through which the senses float,
receptacles of others’ dreams,
to touch the unreasoned truth,
man’s greater heritage.
III.
Where is cruelty: a bacchic diptych
Indiscriminate
Eva’s maenad dance demands
real man her lunar due.
In what dark human enthymeme
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poem by Rob Dyer
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