Friday, October 6, 2017

Repast: The Testimony of the Loaves and Fishes (Poetry by Bob Racine)


The following poem is one I have been working on for quite some time.  I guess I have been timid about sharing it due to its bizarre nature and its strange language.  Much of the poetry I have written over the years, like this one, has been inspired by incidents in the New Testament.  But this one might take some getting used to, so I strongly suggest that you not stop with only one read-through.  Give it a second and maybe third reading in the hopes of it becoming clearer and/or more meaningful.  It covers more territory than at first may be apparent.                        

Mark me well, name me not. 
Only know how my paltry life ceased,   
when I saved the day and the same day saved me. 

Millions of grains of cosmic truth assembled 
with five thousand I was to feed. 
A tough Prophet’s act to follow, yet I became 
the unwitting subject of abundance.  

Mark me well, name me not. 
Only know where I’ve been, where I go,  
what I know, what I am –  
a progeny of soil and water, land and sea, 
grain and sperm, a fertilized egg  
in the ovum of a little known place. 

Before that day, 
mindless morsels in bondage to human appetite, 
mere loaves and fishes without even a pauper’s praise. 
This to remain, but for the grace of someone 
building a new Kingdom of Light.

Mark well the airtight refuge I took from him 
in a traveler’s pouch. 
Know, if you will, the field of force he unleashed,
laying siege to my cloister. 
I saw him not as he harvested
thousands of grains of truth in his teeth. The scandal of 
the man, the Prophet, the Kingdom Builder, 
the Truth Reaper, lost to me in my functional innocence.

The plentiful harvest, hands that labored in the ground, 
the plow that split the furrow –  
I was of the fruit they had borne.  And now 
a harvest in the making that would feed forever 
the sons and daughters of earth! 

A seed must fall into the ground and die to give birth.
I had sprung from its core, and only he who now 
stirred above me knew my worth – 
the Lord of the harvest yet to be.

I marked myself well –  
what I was – lackluster crumbs to sustain 
lackluster life, bartered for a peasant’s pittance, 
fated to be human refuse. 
What was I in my meagerness at such a 
cosmic renaissance?  Out of my element 
I awaited the sentence of human forgetfulness
And yet, of me he spoke, as of the seed that could move 
a mound of rock and return its abundance to the sower. 
I knew not that I was of such ancestry as had given the Word 
its flesh, such flesh and such Word as now shed its light 
upon the living and the dead.

Then into the void, as pebbles upon still water, there fell 
the murmurs of a milling crowd, the shuffling of feet 
uncertain of home and what somehow I knew to be 
the invisible soul’s longings laid bare 
amidst spectator hunger and ambivalence.  

And I heard my summons, 
the curl and crackle of the cloth about me, leaving me bare 
before air and soil and water and twilight chill and 
expectant throngs of humanity awaiting my pleasure. 
“Cover me!  Cover me!” I would have cried, but heaven
had not made me the gift of a voice, at other times 
so unenviable.

It mattered not.  I was spared from attrition 
by the Prophet’s genius stroke.  
Destiny marked the place, and I, if the attributes of 
flesh and blood  had yet become mine, would have known 
to call this repast by one of love’s many names, 
my then throbbing elements borne up in hands reaching
into heaven. 

This one who placed himself above the mollification of 
the mass mind, this healer out of the world, valued me 
above the genre of raw human necessity, made me a party 
to his compassion, to intangibles I would never perceive, 
tangibles to become reconciled with intangibles 
all about me.

For all this I was rendered immortal!

The five thousand, unmarked by destiny, nameless in 
their mass generality, not perceiving, partook of me, and 
began their mortal trek homeward.  They saw not that I then 
passed into history to witness in their stead 
last Passovers and betrayals, crucifixions and Eucharists, 
vow takings and idolatries of sacred covenants.

Mine is the miracle of odyssey, 
to be touched by more than I could ever touch, 
to bear no cross, only a sign read by some, 
of things taken in and recomposed to embellish 
the weak and the hollow,
of life in substance and fullness.

Mortification – ’tis beyond my simple extremity, 
yet now I tear apart, I scatter wide,
in tempo with hearts that break for disease and distress. 
Arms to embrace – they are denied me, yet now 
I delight to be dropped on mercy missions penetrating
the wide world.  To love and befriend, win or gain favor – 
such gifts outside my purview.  
Yet now nations call to me.  I confer with them 
across their dinner tables.

But for those in high places, draining
the oceans and granaries of the world, for those 
crazed in their gluttony, fouling nature’s nest and 
crippling my kindred, for the eat-meat-greet mobs, 
in their gusto mistaken for dedicated enclaves, 
I have nothing – no tears to weep.  I must defer to
the better breed of flesh and blood.  It is for them to 
cut a delicate path through callousness, extravagance, 
monopoly and greed.  I am otherwise enjoined 
by powers impervious to human loss and shall be, 
as long as Earth is a sovereign substance in living space.

Mark me well, name me not. 
Only know where I have been since that day, what I 
sew and reap evermore.  
I answer the squalling summons of hunger and need, but
I hunger no more myself.  Before soil and water and 
expectant throngs I move and germinate and wax 
mutely eloquent, no longer jealous of any act I must follow, 
favored to pass, in search of other multitudes, through 
all that stands or crawls, while prophets and peacemakers hold
my intangible worth in escrow for the millions yet unborn.  


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

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