April 15, 2019
This is a desert place, and the hour is now past:
send away the multitudes…
– Matthew 14:15
Miracles are hard to come by these days;
Ides will thus warn us: wonders that profess
Resplendence ache to sing our debt to praise —
And yet we only envy happiness.
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!”
Laments our world, fast in its barren tracts.
In Sisyphus we find no Calvary:
Zygote and embryo and fetus – facts.
Accounted human, though, such accidents
Belie necessity’s phantom commands —
Each birth, though fixed as stars or blowing sands,
Translates as one of nature’s sacraments.
Here, then, is life – given frame in its breaching;
Less taken, the more gifted in its reaching.
Whoa.
Good poem, but I don’t understand the Sisyphus line.
Thanks.
BJB,
Sisyphus: Man without God or, to be metaphysical about it, man without telos, end, goal.
I’m thinking of Christ’s via dolorosa juxtaposed with Sispyphus’s via vana – that is, the latter’s fruitless trek, endlessly pushing a boulder up the hill in Hades, never reaching his goal.
JOB
Got it. Thanks.
And, maybe more obviously, both _viae_ go up hills. Possibly the single best analogy for the similarities and differences between our Graeco(-Roman) and Judaic traditions I have *ever* read.
Marvelous poem, JOB.
Thanks, Quin!
I agree, that’s a brilliant pairing. And a beautiful poem.
Spolier alert: this poem references the birth of the latest La Mesa offspring! Wah–hooo!