FUNERAL PROCESSION
Written & Read by Charles Bryant
Under these lamps. Beside this water. Blessed
by the sensuous mouth mouthing the words
of the older litany, these formulae of passion
whose inevitable end lingers to eternity.
I might have guessed - for reverie foreclosed
the pleasure of the sense of touch against
the breathing satin - the apposite declension
of grasping and of holding. (Make of your mouth
an organ rare in reproduction of much such music.)
Here are the buds of spring on which I munch
in a clench, in a clasp. Spring's evensong is over;
night has come.
Yet in the last light's glimmering shadows
as petals snow upon the glass-green darkness
of the lawn; as eyes take on a new intensity
and lips a richer purple hue; when the sudden lightning
fills the sky, a sense of pure intensity electrifies
this landscape and ourselves that cower behind
appearances. In a shower of liquid meteor we behold,
clinging to each other, how between us growing
there appears the one-from-two imago of our beings.
Then we view what took two lifetimes coming:
the one eternal behind the thousand things,
the eye of wisdom. Love's ultimate unfolding
which still unfolds....
....flowers continually in ever increasing scope
as we stand face to face staring out together
across the stretching wilderness, feeling
each others heartbeat, musical syncopation
of all senses. That proposition and that contract
sealed, let the funeral procession proceed
down into the one eternal tomb, our catafalque
ablaze with gems, our funeral masks of prized
and beaten gold, clouds of perfumed incense
thick in air.
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It should be noted that the funeral is that of the old self, the unregenerated physical body. Living is a cyclical series of little deaths but each end is the beginning of some new growth, some new and richer realisation. Caterpillars and butterflies come to mind, psyche being the unfolded glory of the transformed grub.
4 окт 2024
