Latter-Season Baptismals

The moment he is baptised Dylan (twin of Lleu or Lug) makes for the sea and receives the sea’s nature, swimming well as any fish, and because of this he is called Dylan Eil Ton, "Sea Son of Wave." No wave ever broke beneath him.

-- Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage



THE STONE FONT

At the north end of the isle I
Found the cave entrance, or thought to,
Tight as a virgin’s oath to be
Merry this once, for me striding
In from the sea. I wedged through the
Red lips of cold granite into
A dark chamber, huge with the tide’s
Boom -- an angelic organum
Somehow vaster than the sea’s. Then
The sound went low as the sea ebbed
And I found the stone basin which was
Carved by God in the rearward wall.
Water dripped into it from the world
Above, slow as milk from earth’s dug.
My ear pressed here takes the next tug.

***

Cusp of the eventual season: days still humid and hot, mostly cloudless, the rigor of summer mortissed hard in its late beams. How long, O Lord? Our is an Injun autumn, each morning breaking later, wafting up from an increasing dark, causing the heart to psalm the halcyon waxy golden wan light which saturates the musk rose with infinite tenderness -- but not, yet, for us, for soon all that burns off and it’s Business As Usual in the Mickey’s Witched Realm, Caterpillars ‘n’ dump trucks eviscerating wilderness in a pentecost of suburban blight, thickening cords of traffic gooping back down the byways to service industry jobs (three of ‘em, for many), advertorial lust blazoned on every skyward glance (blimps, biplanes hauling beach signage, angels wingjacked and gussied up with cleavage-peeking nipplage).

At work the hammers lift and fall ever heavier, cracking the surficial stillness God wreathes with hard drive failures, migraines, data loss. While the tech on to salvage what he could, a hole opened up in my eye & I was speared by blinding light, a spear of pain, an epiphany of software corruption, Moby’s white visage smithereened into my hull, the crochety interregnum of withered Summer self-nailed to his paradisal throne. Nothing could save that hard drive; nothing has softened that migraine, not excessive doses of Frova, not ice on the neck nor a microwaved wet rag over the eyes--not for several days, at least. Today it’s there though decently ebbed, after coming home early last night (skipping the gym) and trying to keep my eyes closed.

All of this writing, all of that jackhammering Opportunity at work, so much to do here at home and money tight, post-hurricane mid-Iraq pre-confirmation hearing USA weary & bitchy and fearing the pumps -- everything going at once--: what surprise is there to this sum sump of pain, this shriekage? No duh.

But the season does ebb, infinitesimally, by scorched degrees; and salves of greater nougat than I can name are richest in such lees. My wife’s been sweet and caring despite her own angst and woes, even coming up out of sleep yesterday morning as I lay wounded & groaning & wondering how to get the forward engines going; she reached down and pushed me on my back (I had been stroking her feet) and invoked all the ocean graces to wash my migraine in bliss. Thanks sweetie, thanks God. And the cats outside hovered and purred and rubbed against me as I got their meals ready, each as desperate for touch as for food, perhaps identically so; and the morning spreading up from the east, just the faintest tincture of blue ebbing hard dark, the lavish emptiness of night still rich and fragrant, composing in my hearted mind a hosannah which itself offered passage through the day. Always the meditative, mediated Amen, saturated in the most ancient meanders behind, finds the door which provides enough blue median through every salt mine and desert migraine a day has yet deposed to me. I may have lost my bookmarks, but I blunder deeper beyond their shores.




WATCHER OF THE SKIES

2002

One later afternoon in the summer
of 1976 I stood on the balcony
of my father’s 39th floor apartment
overlooking the Hudson
watching barges and tugs work
the hard-glittering blue. Far below
me the faint incessant clatter
of traffic on the West Side Highway,
that drum and fife of a daily purpose
I so reviled. I was listening
to “Watcher of the Skies,”
an art-rock anthem by a band
called Genesis, a song of
synth grooves rising
from symphonic hooves
of drums and hard guitar
an a steady, psalming voice.
Even farther below me
sad days and child and teen,
family days long tossed,
my faith in Christ tangled
in that sinking wreck,
—all lost, I prayed high
in my father’s tower,
sipping an Orange Blossom
Special and lifting
my eyes with the music
toward the glorious West
where the sun held court
as evening spread orgasmic
shivers of liquor pink and blue.
At that moment I sensed
a vatic way to redeem
a life, a charm invoked
through sound and word
to wake heaven from the knells
of dusk. A song or poem
constructed well would take me
to a better home, I swore.
I drank my gin and orange juice
dreaming mytho-tropic dreams,
mouthing the vows, playing
the song again and again.
I was 18 and I didn’t know shit,
but I sure loved the eternal
stink of it. I’ve spent the rest of my life
getting down to exactly what I heard
when I stood there watching the skies,
believing I’d find up there or in
a woman’s starry, gin-soaked stare
what waited patiently for me inside.


***

from Mark 1:1-13, King James Version:

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

And there went out unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;

And he preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

I indeed have baptized you with water; but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.

And straightaway coming up out of the water, he saw that the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descended upon him:

And there came a voice from heaven, saying, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.

And there he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.



Nietzsche’s Zarathustra returns from that wild and brinous deep desert deep in Jesus’ spirit-watered soul, speaking to the assembly these words by which I work and row and sing:


Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an
abyss.

A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a
dangerous trembling and halting.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is
lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are
the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows
of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down
and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth
of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that
the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the
Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh
he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going,
and an arrow of longing.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be
wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the
bridge.

I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for
the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a
virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling
to.

I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give
back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.

I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then
asketh: “Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb.

I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always
doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.

I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones:
for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.

I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must
succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through
a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all
things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only
the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark
cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and
succumb as heralds.

Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the
lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—

***

... Long ago, when Manannan, the god of wind and sea, offspring of Lir, the Ocearius of the Gael, lay once by weedy shores, he heard a man and a woman talking. The woman was a woman of the sea, and some say that she was a seal: but that is no matter, for it was in the time when the divine race and the human race and the soulless race and the dumb races that are near to man were all one race.

And Manannan heard the man say: “I will give you love and home and peace.” The sea-woman listened to that, and said: “And I will bring you the homelessness of the sea, and the peace of the restless wave, and love like the wandering wind.” At that the man chided her and said she could be no woman, though she had his love. She laughed, and slid into green water.

Then Manannan took the shape of a youth, and appeared to the man. “You are a strange love for a seawoman,” he said: “and why do you go putting your earth-heart to her sea-heart?” The man said he did not know, but that he had no pleasure in looking at women who were all the same. At that Manannan laughed a low laugh. “Go back,” he said, and take one you’ll meet singing on the heather. She’s white and fair. But because of your lost love in the water, I’ll give you a gift.”

And with that Manannan took a wave of the sea and threw it into the man’s heart. He went back, and wedded, and, when his hour came, he died. But he, and the children he had, and all the unnumbered clan that came of them, knew by day and by night a love that was tameless and changeable as the wandering wind, and a longing that was unquiet as the restless wave, and the homelessness of the sea. And that is why they are called the Sliochd-na-mara, the clan of the waters, or the Treud-na-thonn, the tribe of the sea-wave.
And of that clan are some who have turned their longing after the wind and wave of the mind—the wind that would overtake the waves of thought and dream, and gather them and lift them into clouds of beauty drifting in the blue glens of the sky.

How are these ever to be satisfied, children of water?

-- “The Children of Water”
Fiona MacLeod




BAPTISED AT EBB TIDE

2005

I was baptised at ebb-tide
on the last day of my childhood;
the receding wave which
caught me there has ferried
me at last to here, a man
both of the shore-walking world
and of waters brined by God
with salt’s hard misery,
stinging every bliss with
a bottomless undrinkable.
Your ebbings have defined
my ways, always leaving
me alone to name the flood
which drowned every bed
I’d shored on nights before,
filling my mornings with
that empty dripping soft
blue door still resonant
with the cantakerous roar
which wakened in our kiss.
Each beach-song I
carve here is a nautilus
of your curvelike curse,
woven in the rounded way
you turned to me then
turned away; curvelike
the song rounds down
through the misery of
dry and drier nights
grinding down, like old
sand poured through
a wave-smoothed glass,
into these roundelays
of surflike refrains
upon a paper strand
where verbals wash, leaving
me at last again at the far
white end of every beach
you woke me on. On those
fragile magic sands
I leave this shell-seeming shell
for you to find again,
long after I have washed
out to ring the bronze of hell.
How best to return
the wave that bittersweetened
all with its cathedral
rise and smash
careening wild in foam
than to harrow full
the quiet draw in
every pre-dawn dark,
recalling every man
baptised at ebb who
drowned in love’s
reclaiming wave?
Such dead are like
seaweed at low tide,
green glyphs of
what remains, drained
and flattened of
their former flout
of spermatic equine fire:
Read me in that wild
blue latinate the
same tenor which
the selkies sing from
their black rocks,
of sea and shore
dreams inked. I am
a man long ebbed
from North Sea smash
where just the song
of foam remains,
stingingly unrepentant
in the wilderness
of that recede which
wombs the next blue
to drown the likes of me
in you.