Vigil (after Gérard de Nerval)

i.m. Robyn Denny
3.10.1930–20.5.2014

‘Jerusalem is a dwelling place of many Archons’
(1 Apoc. Jas. 25 : 18)


I

When the Lord, revealing his poet’s soul,
lifts up thin arms beneath the living trees,
lost in an incommunicable deep
and knowing his friends for true enemies,

then looks down at those attendants, the whole
gang of snorers, all triumphing in dream
while their faces droop in bestial sleep,
he shouts, ‘religion’s a fucking scheme!

Hello? Hey, hello! This is breaking news.
After gorging on wakefulness, glugging pain,
I smashed the skies with the lightest kiss,

staring past blue shards to the chill abyss
where they who’ll slay me, the counterfeiters, reign.
...