Ascend to the Light

Winter of 2021
Part 1

Contents

1. On New Year’s Eve 2020
2. Craving
3. An unending moment
4. Wintergreen strangeness
5. Solitary tree

6. Before leaving, enter in
7. The unchecked dream
8. A preface to writing
9. While we slept
10. The end of `Amerika’

11. Night has fallen
12. For peace
13. Loyalty to one’s regime
14. Two men
15. The unheard call

16. The bliss of nothingness
17. Unknowingness
18. Twilight of the idols
19. Awareness of death
20. Spare us from ourselves

21. The fix
22. A portrait of old age
23. Lessons of aging (1)
24. Completing 70
25. Celebrating my parents

26. Cemetery town
27. Descent to the dead
28. Living ocean of death
29. Home of the homeless
30. The emperor of emptiness

31. Funeral pall
32. Winding-down clock
33. It dis-covered itself
34. The well is dry
35. Of that love

36. Not by beauty alone
37. Return to me // turn me back
38. A moment recalled
39. The unveiling
40. Return to the source

41. Werde wär du bist
42. Snow on the desert
43. Dem lieben Gott
44. The coda to the 8th
45. Restless seas of sound

46. The gift of isolation
47. Light
48. Nearly 0200
49. What have we done to ourselves?
50. Out of the cesspool

51. City of death
52. Escape from the city of death
53. A note on writing
54. Invisible hand
55. Consciousness coming to be

56. Nap now, and nap later!
57. Going down
58. Ash Wednesday revisited
59. To a god unknown
60. The unbeliever

61. The Bernini Colonnade
62. The retreat

Ascend to the Light
Winter of 2020-21 (Part I)

1. On New Year’s Eve 2020

You rise from where you are
Not from where you wish you were
Or from where you think you are.
From where will you arise?

One who has descended
Longs to ascend again,
To return to what had been glimpsed,
Returning to what is being forgotten;
But the way is steep and rough.

Is the way up the same
As the way down?
Are they not identical?
They are not the same for the one faring.

I got into a Mercedes.
“I’ve been studying in Germany.”
“Say something in German.”
“Wo gehen wir?”

“Nein, sage `wo fahren wir.”
Mine was the more searching question,
Whether knowingly or not;
A dim awareness of life’s journey.

The one who descended
Is not the same as the one ascending--
You are and you are not you--
In faring forth, one becomes other

But that other may be more oneself
Than what one had been before.
Or in descending one may have fallen
From one degree of glory to a lesser.

Light awaits, but the way is dark,
Illuminated by invisible light.
Light radiating from within the depths
Will guide the one ascending.

Still, all must be still, waiting in silence
For the light within to shine without.
Long is the duration of darkness.
The longest night one may endure
Seems like a flicker in time when past.

The darkness is interminable
To one who waits without trust
That light will eventually dawn.
Trust and hope begin the ascent.

2. Craving

Am I chained to a rock,
Drifting through a sea,
Or slowly ascending
As in a dark shaft of light?

Waiting for light to dawn,
Waiting to take flight and ascend
How many diversions can I find?
What can I crave to `kill time’?

Desire becomes a craven obsession
To one who will not bravely sit still.
There is a time to act,
And a time to wait in emptiness.

The empty spirit grabs at anything
Rather than endure itself in solitude.
The empty stomach would digest itself
With its acids longing for food.

Now is the time to sit still in silence,
Craving nothing beyond the boundaries
Of the peace and bliss of nothingness.

3. An unending moment

Killed in a motorcycle accident.
Parents, sister, friends
Dragged down, submerged
In the turbulent whirlpool of grief.

What can I do for them?
A note of consolation to console
The inconsolable agony that is theirs,
That suddenly became their whole life.

I’ll volunteer to offer a service
In honor of this young man
For the peace of those bloodied
And bruised by that unending moment.

4. Wintergreen strangeness

Examining a wintergreen plant
Sudden awareness:
One exists among being-things,
One among such profusion.
Strange and wonderful
The experience of existing.

5. Solitary tree

Snow falling lightly
Under a rarely gray sky.
Trees stripped bare
Leafless not lifeless.
Statuary trees exposed
To winter, not to eyes
Of those driving by.

Solitary ash still standing
Bravely in a country cemetery
Untended and unseen.
There you are alone
All one and one with all.
Silently snow is falling
And you standing silently.

6. Before leaving, enter in

The way out may be the way up
Or perhaps the way down
Deciding with forethought and courage
Acting with the end in mind.

Treasure each day on the way
For time’s return is only in the mind.
Each moment contains the pearl
Even when grating as a grain of sand.

What is the goal that one must keep
Before the mind’s discerning eye?
Death is the necessary, unintended end,
Not the choice-worthy goal of life.

Spiraling is the way of mind
Moving from present into present now.
The way out may be the way back,
The way back may be the way up.

To become what one truly is
To be the who within the flux.
To be at peace with wakefulness
To find fulfillment in the open moment.

Days at a time without another’s voice,
Days at a time without another’s form.
Here is a desert for plants and souls,
Here is a place of death and of life.

Before leaving, fully enter in
To know who is exiting.
To exist it to keep exiting
Until one enters the unchangeable.

7. The unchecked dream

They would have peace and unity
By obliterating all opposition
To their own will and way:
The dream of self-godded men.

Painful and instructive
To watch a regime become totalitarian.
Ascend to the light
Amidst descending night.

8. A preface to writing

Before speaking, writing, acting
Quiet the mind.

Changes in personal and social life
May be so dramatic, so intense
That one must struggle
As calmly as possible
To find inner peace.

Begin outside, move within.
Apart from all controllable sounds
Still the body:
Sitting upright and alert
Mind the breath.

Not carried away by imaginings
Not willfully thinking
Quiet the mind.

When quieted, ask:
Why are you here?
What are you seeking now?

9. While we slept

Mass democracies are illusory;
Mass movements tend to tyranny.
Given contemporary technologies
These movements become totalitarian.

America is becoming like China
Like the Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany--
An organized totalitarian regime
To control and “transform the world.”

The will to power, unchecked from within,
Becomes the will to complete domination.
America’s political and social elites
Embody the will to dominate.

Fed by Gnostic progressive ideology,
They seek to control all aspects of life.
What remains to check the lust for power?
Reluctant power to thwart lustful power.

10. The end of `Amerika’

What is their goal, their dream?
A globalist ecumenical empire,
One world society without borders;
The annulment of `Amerika,’
`Founded by white supremacists.’

What is the source of this dream,
Other than the lust for power?
European intellectuals, especially Marxists
Who `know the future’ and hate the nation-state
Believing in `one world order.’

How did this dream come to rule us?
Through our academic and intellectual elites,
Megaphoned by the mass media,
Institutionalized in academia and bureaucracies,
And liberating our youth from common sense.

What is the likely result of their dream?
The continuing emergence and dominance by China,
The end of the United States of America,
A `new world order’ ruled by China
With all elites speaking Mandarin.

What, then, is to be done?
O my people, how have I offended you?
Return to the Lord our God
Whom we traded for trinkets and pleasures
And fight for `one nation under God.’

11. Night has fallen

Darkness covers the earth
Where voices are silent.
A snake seeks its prey
An owl screeches
A vole freezes.

Night has fallen.
Thick passing clouds
Veil the moon.
Wind wrestles through trees
Hovering over the graves.

12. For peace

When overwhelmed by change upon change
Personally, socially, environmentally,
Peace of mind and heart stands out
As the most necessary desideratum.

Only in peace can reason hold sway
And guide one’s thoughts and choices.
Only in peace, as turmoil is stilled,
Can one find noble upward way.
Only in peace can truth be heard,
Discerned, weighed, absorbed, lived.

For peace and its soothing blessings
One must forego worry, fear, anger.
For peace, renounce all disturbing thoughts,
Stilling the body and the mind.

13. Loyalty to one’s regime

As dominating powers sink into tyranny
What ought a citizen do?
As a Leviathan State becomes totalitarian
How can one protect oneself?

Willful blindness and mental intoxication
By Gnostic ideological dreaming
Prevent citizens from seeing and renouncing
The idol State that emerged in their midst.

The State rises from the sea of ignorance,
From the abyss of lust to dominate;
The will to “transform the world” nightmares
Into the reign of nouveau de Sades.

The more we chant charms to democracy
The less truly democratic we’ve become.
The more we’ve sung hymns to the masses
The more enslaved we’ve become.

“The new order of the ages” transmogrified
Into a more extreme form of age-old tyranny.
So much is obvious to anyone but the blind.
How then ought one to live a noble life?

Without fomenting violence, one must detach
One’s loyalty and one’s cheerful obedience
From the State, the bureaucracies, and parties
And stand apart from the madness.

Obedience to right reason and to the true God
Must take complete precedence over other loves.
The evil in what we have made of ourselves
Must be admitted, denounced, rejected.

We the People have destroyed the Republic
Bequeathed to us by more virtuous citizens,
By wiser and more noble human beings.
We have enchained ourselves to an empire

Of greed, of oppression, of lies, of pleasures.
Rejecting the vision of our Founders
And the lessons of classical and biblical traditions
We have become a cesspool of oppression

Killing not only the bodies of the unborn,
But the minds of our young people,
The hearts of our fellow citizens,
The way of life we freely inherited.

14. Two men

He wears white robes and walks quietly,
Speaks in soft tones with a smile on his face.
By common belief, he’s s a holy man,
Called “holy father,” bowing meekly.

When he speaks, the quiet words are often barbed
Not by truth, but by the foolishness of an old man
Who has the earmarks of urbane pretentiousness
More a sugary imitation than genuine holiness.

The masses sing his praises, the media adore him,
Because he echoes their beliefs--
Socialism and anthropocentric humanism,
For who is he to judge vice or lies?

Another man is vilely reputed by most to be vile,
Scream-preached to be corrupt from head to foot,
A vicious human being in every sense of the word,
Deserving of no shred of human decency.

Those who espouse liberal democratic norms
Accord him no basic human or civil rights,
But treat him as a convicted criminal—indeed,
As a mass murder of millions of innocent humans.

This man never pretended to be holy or virtuous,
Never claimed to be a man of God or a “holy father;”
He does not bow his head meekly in false humility,
But is at one with who he claims to be.

Which of these two men has served humanity better?
Which of these two defended the lives of the most innocent,
The helpless unborn infants in the womb?
Which of these two men is truly more worthy of respect?

One man is a screen
On which they project their loves;
The other man’s a screen
On which they project their hate.

15. The unheard call

The call of the ocean still heaves within,
The call of solitude in silent places,
The call of friends needing befriending.

The call to behold the stars faded with the dawn,
The call to sit in silence silently departed,
The call to prayer grows fainter from neglect.

Still I can feel the calling draw to write,
The urge to wrestle to explicate thoughts,
The pull to carry stones up from the depths.

My psyche’s dazed by so much movement,
So much change in rapid succession,
Encouragements and disappointments collide.

Where is oneself among these competing voices?
Where is the soul that senses divine presence?
Where is a heart longing for wisdom and peace?

Sensing little pull, I need to arouse myself
To ascend towards the unseen light
Beyond the confine of my mind and soul.

Remember the calls of yesterday,
Remember when I sat in silence
Trusting the unfelt unseen presence.

What do I want then here and now?

To heed again the unheard call
And slide silently away, silently
Into the nearly forgotten unknown.

16. The bliss of nothingness

Now is the time to sit still in silence
Craving nothing beyond the boundaries
Of the peace and bliss of nothingness.

Descend into the bliss of nothingness
Or ascend to the living light of love?
Descend into empty darkness
Or rise into the light of God?

Is there a difference between all and nothing?
What might be that difference beyond words
Beyond mere formal-verbal formulations?
What if nothing is all, and all is nothing?

The way down into utter darkness
May be the way towards the light.
Perhaps those who would ascend
Must first descend to the imageless.

How can one ascend with weights
Strapped and loaded on his back?
How can a soul take flight
Weighed down by its own mortality?

Knowing knowing knowing knowing
Nothing nothing knowing nothing
Nothing known except not knowing
In the dark light of knowing unknowing

The withered leaf falls freely from the tree
Falling downward uncontrollably
Blown and blowing in gusts of wind
Winding downward to the groundless ground

Unsettled unstopping still blown blowing
From place to place unceasingly
Brittle dried leaf breaking apart
Parts blowing breaking blowing blowing

No longer a leaf but bits of matter
Blowing and mixing with unsettled earth
Dirt feces grass dried insects water
Mixing into formless unformed matter

That does not matter to the leaf that was
To the insect that crawled naked on the earth
To the bird and animal droppings dropped
To the water watering the unformed dirt

Dirt dust blowing blowing in winds
Rising and falling and rising again
Dust blowing there anywhere everywhere
Blowing endlessly into nothing nowhere

“And all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well”
Not here not there to nowhere known
To one who grasps at knowing.

17. Reining in

For those who want beliefs, beliefs;
For those who want science, science;
For those who want violence, violence;
For those who want nothing, peace.

Rein-in the rain of speculation
So reason may reign unchained.
Rein-in the lust for power and wealth,
For pleasure after pleasure unto death.

incomplete

18. Twilight of the idols

Götterdämmerung, Götzen-Dämmerung,
Twilight of the gods, twilight of the idols,
Twilight of the American gods and idols.

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
Our republic, democracy, limited free government,
Freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
With no establishment of religion, of ideology;

Freedom to assemble, freedom of the press,
Free enterprise, free trade, open markets,
Open and welcoming society
With liberty and justice for all--

All these American dream-gods died
Of neglect, of experiential atrophy,
Just as the gods of old, Jove and his Pantheon,
Faded into the stale air of forgetfulness

As the Roman Republic yielded to tyranny,
And Rome became synonymous with raw power,
With the will to break all beneath its splitting sword,
And to play blood sport with the lives of Christians.

***
“Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world
For the rectitude of our intentions…
With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,
We mutually pledge to each other our Lives,
our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Where have they gone, the Declaration and Constitution,
The Federal Republic of citizens and states,
Of citizens working for justice and truth,
Guaranteeing the freedom of each from tyranny

Under the non-discriminating rule of law
Equally applied to all—rich and powerful as well.

My fellow citizens, what have we done to our inheritance?

19. Awareness of death

“For most of us,” for you and for me,
“we shall never be more aware of death
Than we are at this moment,”
Wrote Dom Aelred Watkin.

Aware of your death’s close proximity,
How will you spend your death today?
How will you avoid running away,
Fleeing from death’s dark shadows?

20. Spare us from ourselves

“God spare us from sad saints,”
Theresa of Avila supposedly said.
God spare me from smiley saints
Too timid to speak the truth
Of reality, and take the hit.

God, spare me from myself
Strengthen me to check myself.
Above all, keep me true to reality,
True to inner lights, despite the cost.
God, spare us from hypocrisies.

May I never be called “a man of the Church,”
For such a man resembles a church mouse--
Except more of a yes-man than a mouse would be.
May I never write or say what others want,
Nor what I want, disregarding the truth.

21. The fix

The fix is in; junkies have been injected
With the drug of their choice:
Power. Power. Domination. Power.
American preppy-elite progressives know,
Feel exhilarated, fly sky-high
Because the fix again is in for them:

Power and domination of `Deplorables,’--
Smelly Walmart shoppers in fly-over states
Who work with their dirty hands,
Who don’t know how to code or snort,
Ignorant of politicized, gnosticized `science,’
Ignorant of the socialized global world order.

22. A portrait of old age

“Retirement’s not all its cracked up to be,”
My mother would say after my father retired.
He was sixty-five then, with interests and hobbies.
He had a friend or two with whom he would meet.
My mother had friends, but she could not drive,
As macular degeneration was blinding her.

How lonely and isolated she became,
A woman who much enjoyed human interchange.
My father was by temperament a loner,
Who would spend all day in his dark room,
Locked away from my mother’s company,
Alone with his photographic art.

After he died, she went into a care facility
In Iowa and then in South Dakota,
Where I was living and working at the time.
What she enjoyed quickly became evident:
Holding court over a meal, and speaking
With anyone and everyone who joined her.

Once again, her social skills shined through,
And she was more content than she’d been
In years, rarely mourning the past,
Rarely complaining at all, needing little,
Wanting little, until her health failed,
And a series of small strokes ended her life.

I did not realize, nor did I understand
My mother’s loneliness and isolation
In those twenty some years of retirement,
When my father unthinkingly ignored her,
Kept to himself or with a friend or two,
And her near blindness encircled her world.

“Growing old is not for sissies,” she said,
With sorrow beyond the range of my vision.
How much she suffered emotionally, mentally,
I only began to glimpse after he died,
When twice she said to me, “Now I feel free.”
Their marriage was often strained,

Two very different human beings,
Possibly lacking the will or the skill
To share their sufferings with each other,
Unless through angry recriminations,
Emotional outbursts only serving to increase
The growing abyss between them

As their health declined, and they drifted
Towards inevitable death; and until he died,
She fell downwards into depression,
A state of internal suffering barely known
And not understood by those who knew her,
A condition all too common in old age.

23. Lessons of aging (1)

How should I spend my time of dying
Moving from this world into death,
Now that I am “old and gray and full of sleep,”
Completing seventy years in twilight.

This is the realm of twilight day-night
Between passing time and eternity,
Between coming to be and being
Beyond the reach of temporal mortality.

I’ve learned some lessons since retiring:
As a single man, not to remove to a small town,
A long-entrenched, isolated rural village,
Where many families go back for generations.

If a retired single man or woman
Wishes to leave their final place of work,
Consider a community built for retirees,
Or perhaps a small urban center,

Where one can find some likemindedness,
Where not everyone knows each other’s business--
Or thinks they know what they do not know--
And may build new and chosen friendships.

A few more common truths have been learned,
That probably pertain to nearly everyone
Beyond fluid youth and gelling middle age,
Hardening into the fixed patterns of one’s final years,

As decrepitude creeps into body, mind, and soul--
“Before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl
Is broken—before death has finally triumphed over you:
Take time to prepare to die and to journey forth

Into the realm of light well beyond transitory sight,
Beyond the ravages of time, sickness, sin, and death,
When you’ve exhaled your final breath and failing fight
To dawdle a while longer on the shore of unending light.

Loneliness and a growing sense of isolation set in
As one grows old, enduring that time of life serving
To remind all that each is in process of passing away--
Something ignored or buried by fleeting diversions.

Each soul is essentially sole and alone in the world,
Even as it shares in the Whole and in common humanity.
We all live in the same universe, yet see it uniquely--
Or divert our eyes from it in our own self-chosen ways.

Old age is a time for gratitude—for trials and sufferings
As much as for loves, for successes, for and times of joy;
Often learn more from what sinks in painfully
Than from times of ease and unruffled peace.

The trials of life help to make us who we are,
From the shock of birth to death’s dark shutting down;
From times of hunger, loneliness, betrayal, and guilt,
To exhausting nights of restless sleeplessness,

To testings of our character in moments of decision--
To lie or to speak the truth when punishment awaits,
To do one’s duties despite loss, sweat, harm, even death,
To accept one’s share of sufferings manfully, gracefully,

And to face what’s coming with trust in the Almighty
Whose love is the truest healing balm known to man,
Whose wisdom brings good even out of harm and evil,
Who alone draws one outward beyond the waters of death.

24. Completing 70

Seventy years past since I emerged
From my mother’s womb into the world
Of light and dark, of heat and cold,
Of pleasure, pain, sorrow, and joy.

Seventy years with few now left
To enjoy the marvelous gift of life
Learning to live well, to live truly,
To die more nobly day by day.

Seventy years, plus nine months in the womb
And soon a return to the darkness of the tomb,
My course idly, swiftly, stumblingly run
Until I depart to the undiscovered realm.

“Out, out brief candle,” the candles on a cake
“Make a wish” and they are blown out
So precious is life animal life human life
The life in plants as well—precious mysterious life.

Seventy years, and I remember turning five,
Then six, then seven, now ten times that,
Precariously poised between birth and death,
Between dying and rebirth into I-know-not-what.

25. Celebrating my parents

“Mama did the work,” I’ve often said, “and I
Just slid on out.” How easy a birth I do not know,
But barely under two feet in length and nine pounds
Four ounces, the little slide was no joy ride
For the one who labored in love to bear me.

“That was nothing” I can imagine Mama saying,
“Compared to how much I had to bear from you later.”
Ever quick-witted, sometimes slicingly-dicingly so,
And in that regard a good match for my “old man,”
Papa Doc, who could be clever and apt at naming.

“You’re a pissaroo,” he declared me, needing relief.
That was about when I introduced him to Loretta Lynn,
Of whom he said, “she sounds like a choked chicken.”
Such rapier wit from a physician handy with a scalpel.
A little more bluntly he said, “You’re a crock,”

When I was just a dear sweet university student
Who knew my parents didn’t know a damn thing…
And that was about when he told me, “You were a mistake,
A slip,” an admission I took as a badge of honor,
Sliding into the penal world after a penile slip.

I had the truer honor of being with my father
As he died at home from bladder cancer,
Medical books spread out before him, studying
The progress of the disease from a scientific view
As he experienced its ravaging in his body.

Not a word of complaint, accepting reality,
That “nature runs its course,” and telling me,
“I’m not one of those religious types who cries,
`O God, why me?’ Prayer was not to his taste,
But the night before he died, as Mama reported,

This man of science climbed from his bed, onto his bony knees,
And prayed that God would let him die soon,
As he had declined from over two hundred pounds
To under one hundred, and had to keep getting up
To empty his bladder, the old Pissaroo!

And I had the blessing to be with my Mama Gina
As she suffered a series of small strokes, could not eat;
Now ninety and at peace after a life of trials
With my sister and her husband, as she breathed her last.
“How beautiful she looks,” my sister remarked,

And I saw the same thing on her smooth lovely face,
Utterly at peace, displaying again the beauty that was hers
In years long past, and now revealed from the depths out
From her loving and generous heart out to her mortal flesh,
And she returned to the dust from which we all come.

26. Cemetery town

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought
And the thought has found words.” Robert Frost.

1

The tide has ebbed, currents run strong
Seagulls fly randomly, soaring overhead
Blown by stormy winds and crying out
Hungry, unable to find the food they seek.

Why begin at the seashore, writing in a desert?
There’s no ocean here, except in the mind
Or in the vast sky above or earth beneath.
Here is a desolate place of inland isolation

Emptiness felt viscerally in a small dusty town
Speaking with no one beyond causal greetings--
A tranquil hamlet, far removed from social upheavals
Senseless violence erupting from coast to coast.

Presently we focus not on the sea or uncivil unrest
But on what it’s like living far removed from friends
A mile high in a barren arid land squeezed dry
Between mountains that shelter and imprison.

The days will come, I trust, soon after departing
From this cemetery town in south-western Montana
When I’ll pellucidly recall the good I found here:
A rarely disturbed quiet respecting one’s solitude

The awesome beauty of our desert night skies
Mountains veiled in clouds dropping down snow
A casual friendliness among most local town folk
Who kept their hair on when Covid stalked our land

Seeing the distant Pioneers set-aglow by sunrise
Or illumined from behind by the gold-setting sun
Of Venus in early evening or before rosy dawn
Of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, myriads of shining stars.

In days to come I’ll recall with grave gratitude
This old western town, a boot hill in the Ruby
Where death-like silence elicited from me
Poem after poem inscribed in lonely solitude.

With perspective gained from time’s passing, it may be
I’ll understand my sojourn in Sheridan differently
Realizing that the long winter of quiet discontent
Reflected my sense that America and I are dying.

2

Cemetery town, nested in a mountain desert
Rarely blessed with heaven’s waterings--
In a year, one generous rain and nearly no snow
Fitting for a town built on a glacial rock flow

Unable to support grass, flowers, or shrubs
Without salving irrigations in hot summer months
Scorched brown beneath a full-blazing sun--
Sole master of a cloudless azure sky--

A short growing season punctuated with freezes
Killing growth left behind by marauding deer.
Unsuitable land or home for a gardener
Who enjoys tending plants that nourish one’s life.

Dusty western town, hospitable to children
Not to an elderly man retired and alone
Without a venue for making or meeting friends
Nowhere to share a breakfast and converse.

In a brewery or bar friends here might gather--
Not places to frequent when firewater imbibed
Disrespects an aging body and mind
As would sitting alone in a noisy saloon.

The landscape outside—a waterless waste--
Reflects back to me what a man will become
Day after day without human communion
In a town dead still as a country graveyard;

Not seeing or hearing a living human being
Knowing no one with whom to share mind or heart
People absorbed in their extended families
Spending no time on those deemed “outsiders.”

A pastor out to pasture, not a real or retired rancher
Nor a wannabe cowboy in boots and broad hat
Perhaps a mere drifter, transient as tumbleweed
Blowing among those bred here for generations--

A would-be intruder on familial conversations
Whispered, spoken, or shouted behind closed doors
In a desolate valley where gold was discovered
And gold-fevered men died drunk and too young

Where cattlemen quickly occupied more verdant lands
Along the Ruby, the Beaverhead, and small mountain streams
Leaving for other settlers some sandy rock piles
On which to build a town and scratch out a living.

3

Sheridan Cemetery enshrines many who died young
Some resembled death when their bodies still moved--
Dying without nourishment of enriching conversation
Dying without companions on life’s candle journey.

Sixteen months spent in lonesome isolation
As if buried alive and forgotten in an unmarked grave
Cattle foraging overhead on dry grass in a land
Not of milk and honey, but sage brush and snakes.

Named for a Union general who wasted the land
A human butcher who hated what he didn’t understand:
You didn’t kill me, Sheridan, but my soul has languished
Lacking a truer union of communion, one nourishing life.

Spiritual neglect renders a soul dry and waterless
Malnourished and depleting its inner resources
Needlessly self-entombed in a mountain desert
Not finding the spring of renewing refreshment;

Spared in part by the prodigies of wireless communication
Ways to connect with friends from the past
Living far removed in more watered and fertile lands--
While unable to discover an oasis in the Ruby.

I’ve dwelt in you, Sheridan, nearly buried alive
More and less than a stranger in a strange land
Enprisoned as a soul longing for communion
Desiring shared happiness unattainable here.

A decisive turn came when a rancher expelled us
Yelling not to return with my dogs to the cemetery.
From that moment I felt I must exodus with Moses
Out of the valley of death and its cemetery town.

Soon I shall depart from the Egypt of Sheridan
And shake its sandy dust from off my travelled feet
Returning to where I have long-treasured friends
To meet and eat with, communing face to face.

The silence of Sheridan is the still dead peace
Of a long-neglected worn country graveyard.
My body will not dwell in such silence again
Until laid to rest in a wind-swept grave.

4

“For those whom thou think’st thou doth overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me…” John Donne

Writing from the heart, as poets are wont to do,
May be salutary for writer and for reader alike
Provided emotional excess gets checked at the door
And truth is valued more than mere fanciful speech.

The preceding agon of dialogical disclosure will stand
As a testimony to what has been felt and thought;
But now must yield to more grounded, fuller truth
That lightens the spirit from its tomb-like darkness.

***

The tide that ebbed and flowed now floods again,
Seagulls soaring high and calling overhead
Sailing on fresh ocean breezes and crying out
Finding food to fuel their free-forming flights.

Cemeteries bespeak fuller life beyond death
A resurrection or renewal in some other form
In ways transcending our world-bounded sight:
Resurrection is now, for those dwelling in God.

The grave is a sign of transcendent hope
Requiring simple trust in the dead silent God;
The same grave signifies mere loss and death
For those engraved already in ungrounded selves.

Cemetery town becomes a place of resurrection
Not to distant afterlife, but to true life renewed;
The town that seemed to signify mere isolating death
Becomes a hearse bearing inner transformation.

Dead silent Sheridan brings transfiguration
Reaching into depths where divinity dwells
Rising up through intellect to the sensitive soul
Not a dismal desert death but a liberated hell:

The bleak and barren mountains display their majesty
The wasteland of rocks and sand snow-blossoms into white
The death-knelling silence yields again to coyote yells
And the nearly full moon illumines sky and earth below.

In the desert my seagull soul has again taken flight
From cemetery town into a more germinating life
Not fleeing from here to a dream-land nowhere
But into silent-still moments of undulating presence.

—Wm. P. McKane
January 2021

27. Descent to the dead

Have I descended into the realm of the dead
Or have the dead ascended from Hades
And filled the public realm with their corpses
Walking about, talking endlessly, noisily
Proclaiming themselves our masters?

The corpses stalking the land are not defenseless
But carry in their hands weapons of destruction
And shoot from their mouths murderous arrows
Against all deemed alive and still functioning
Amidst these dead, new rulers over all.

I descended to the underworld alone
And found them still sleeping, those who remained.
The rulers had climbed up some secret way
To stalk the living with deadly intent,
Leaving no one left living except the dead.

The dead devoured the flesh of the living
Eating out their beating hearts, their brains,
Hollowing out their skulls to educate them
In the ways of the human-devouring dead,
In the ways of those who would dominate all.

28. Living ocean of death

The draw of the ocean is the allure of death
Fascinating refreshing transforming death
Washing away years of inner neglect
Leading one away from all that’s been known.
Ocean wave after wave leaving nothing unwashed
Nothing dry or apart from the all-embracing flow
All-immersing ocean of settled-unsettling life,

Taking into itself every atom of Eve and of Adam.

Come ocean of life, living ocean of death
Carry me all of me far away out to sea
Where I’ll no longer see anything but you
Unbounded unlimited ocean of life and of death.

29. Home of the homeless

Here is the home of the homeless man
Wanderer wandering upon the faceless earth.
No home for the untethered uncoupled man
But here where nothing else dwells or binds.
Here is the home for the homeless man.

30. The emperor of emptiness

Not the emperor of vanilla ice cream
But the emperor of fulsome folly.
With age may come sheer shamelessness
Without inner-checking self-restraint.
Behold the naked emperor of emptiness,
The mummified emperor of the living dead.

31. Funeral pall

Moisture comes at last to cemetery town
Not as desired, much-needed rain
But as a white blanketing funeral pall
Snow burying the dead-quiet town
All-burying beautiful ice-cold snow
Hiding for a while the desert-dry truth.

32. Winding-down clock

The sun will soon rise on cemetery town
No sound of a bird, no voice is heard
No one is seen or seems to be alive
No city sounds of autos or trucks
Just the steady ticking of a grandfather clock
Slow-steady ticking of a winding-down clock.

33. It dis-covered itself

Unseen, unnoticed for God knows how long
Half-buried in dirt among tall sage brush
Near the eastern fence around Laurin Cemetery.
I found it while walking along with Moses
Or it dis-covered itself to my curious eyes

A sizable rock, which I thought conglomerate--
But a geologist considers breccia more likely--
Its surface displaying a variety of minerals and lichens
Glistening in multi-colored sunlight.

Do I let this rock remain where it lies
Half-buried and probably appreciated
Only if someone happens to stumble upon it;
Or do I bring this world of beauty home with me
And display it for others to see?
The rock is a mini-cosmos deserving to be seen
Provoking marvel at beauty and at natural processes
Hiddenly at work within the undis-covering One.

34. The well is dry

Excepting only brief poems on small themes, I think that “Cemetery town” may mark the end of
over a year’s streak of writing poems. The well has dried up. The rest will be silence.

The well is dry?
Then re-try!
Write anything.
Begin the process
Without excuse.

Soul of my soul,
Where are you?
Light of my light,
Break in!
Voice within all voices,
Speak!

Hallelujah!

35. Of that love

Of that love I need not speak,
But all that I say, I owe to him--
All that I say that is true,
True existentially, true spiritually,
And of how much worth is other truth?
Heuristically important; that is all.

Of that love I can say this:
That it was not self-generated,
Nor self-sustained nor self-corrected;
One was at work in two--
The one who brought us together
And gently led this bird to fledge.

To that love I give no honor
Except it be for the one he loved.
He would want no attention, no fondness,
Just truth that of itself gives life--
A life that overflows in love
Into a love that keeps giving eternally:
Of that love, in that love, I live.

36. Not by beauty alone

The beauty of Mount Baldy at sunset
Red glow on powder-fresh snow
Enshrouded in fractured-colored clouds
Awe’s the viewing eyes and mind--
But cannot suffice for happiness.

Beauty reigns in the Ruby: mountains,
Valleys, skies, night skies, distant panorama--
All that we can call “macro-beauty,”
On a vast, overwhelming, human-dwarfing scale.
But beauty alone cannot bring happiness.

There’s a dignified beauty in the sage brush,
Humble beauty in the rubber rabbit brush,
Humbling beauty in the towering ash
And enormous spruces of the cemetery;
But beauty alone cannot satisfy the soul.

Macro-beauty we have in abundance here,
But intimate, endearing micro-beauty lacks.
Where are the gorgeous flowering shrubs,
The lush growth huddled around homes,
The protrusion of diverse flowers in bloom?

The Sheridan sky in summer is to be shunned,
The harsh brightness of the long-burning sun,
Apollo stripped and bare, unlovable and unloved
Until clouds appear, intercoursing across the sky,
Sheltering we earth-bounded from bold porno sun.

Not by beauty alone can a man live well;
There is goodness that lies deeper than beauty,
And there is truth of reality, the whole of truth,
That keeps beauty in a fuller perspective.
Not by beauty alone, but by love that transforms
Opening the inner eye to beauty’s source and end.

37. Return to me // turn me back

Lover of each being-thing,
Lover even of my wounded soul,
Lover whose love is wisdom
And whose wisdom is love:
Return to me // turn me back.

You who enriched my early years
Who loved and tended me into life
Who salved the wounds within
And gave me purpose and joy
Who changed moments into eternity:

Return to me // turn me back:
Your absence even if mere seeming
Leaves me longing for you again
For you beyond all thought and feeling,
For you within all thought and feeling.

I shall recall your presence
Even in the midst of silent emptiness.
In the simplest act of turning
You nakedly present yourself.
You are the reason of my being.

38. A moment recalled

Suspending for the present the whole context
And the flow of events in linear time:
What essentially happened on that occasion
In that inner unseen experience
When you acted in me as you willed?

You were the full focus of my mind.
You were more than I ever wanted.
You were you apart from me
But wholly with and in me.
No words can do you justice.

39. The unveiling

“If not now, when?”
Unveil yourself, disrobe for me,
Display the beauty of your being.

I have glimpsed, and longed for more.
You took the initiative
And showed me such beauty.

40. Return to the source

Dry the land, dry the soul
That’s not fed by the fountain
Flowing freely to be found
By the seeker and lover,
Not by a mere wanderer.

Remember the source, the hidden source,
The cleft in Himalayan rocks.
Return to the source, peer in,
Gaze in as deeply as you can.
There is the original source of life
There is the abyss of nourishment.

Long and steep was the climb
And lonely-lonesome was the way
But no loneliness was felt
Only desire, longing to find the source
That out of which is ever flowing
Ganges, the sacred river of life.

Looking into the opening between rocks,
Staring intently in, what do you see?
Nothing that can be spoken
Nothing tat can be known
That from which flows the stream
That give life, true life, to all.

41. Werde wär du bist

If these hands could draw, they would draw;
If these hands could sculpt, they would sculpt;
If these hands could compose—ah, the music--
If these hands could work wood, they would.

“Werde wär du bist,” become what you are,

And be yourself in truth,
Not another in pretense.
Become even at seventy the man you are.

You cannot chisel yourself well--
Or you would have already done so.
Mold yourself by breaking patterns
That may be more untrue--

[Note: I fell asleep writing]

42. Snow on the desert

How much more beautiful you are, Ms. Sheridan,
Mile high cemetery town in a mountain wasteland
Generously clothed white by a visiting polar vortex.

Take off your robe of mourning, bleak Sheridan,
And put on a wedding dress, fit for a queen--
A queen beset with jewels, with garnets in the Ruby.

Six inches of snow already fallen, more blowing down,
The most seen in this frigid desert for over a year,
Hiding from eyes your dirt, sand, and rocky nakedness.

Where are your wannabe cowboy-lovers now?
Not even a broad-assed pick-up truck on our street
Just snow falling on snow, smearing lipstick on a pig.

How lovely you are, Ms. Sheridan,
How lovely you are, o barren one,
If only for a few wintry days.

43. Dem lieben Gott

Day is ending, night presses in,
As Bruckner plays his last completed movement
The Adagio of his ninth symphony,
His “farewell to life,” as he called it.

No shadows seen, for the sun has set
Mount Baldy remains illumined in misty rose
Stillness reigns in cemetery town
Buried dead or alive beneath the snow.

Bruckner’s Adagio is an old man’s struggle
To bring together his musical life
And to surrender himself to God’s love
To whom he dedicated his final work.

His concluding musical thoughts are triumphant--
Not a military victory over a supposed enemy,
But a gradual surrender to the irresistible tide
To the ebbing away of life, flowing out to death.

Bruckner’s ending is supremely beautiful:
Such an inspired and humble farewell to life
As a man attuned to God would compose,
The final notes lifting his spirit home.

He longed to compete his last symphony
But Fate thwarted his conscious plan.
In the state of unintended incompletion
His ninth achieved its perfect ending:
A musical ascent of the soul into God.

44. The coda to the 8th

Sharp contrast of Bruckner’s eighth and ninth.
Only last evening did I listen to the former,
And was utterly surprised and exhilarated
By the Finale, with its condensed coda.
Words fail. One must listen for oneself.

What I think Bruckner achieves in the coda:
His soul has deep awareness and dread
Of pending-impending divine judgment.
Anton’s not without hope and trust in God
But he dare not presume on His mercy.

Divine Judgment breaks into consciousness
Of the individual soul—of Bruckner himself;
And perhaps it is also judgment on the world.
There is no escape from the searching,
All-illuminating, all-terrifying Judgment by God.

Bruckner has placed himself on his deathbed
Before the now pending-suspending weight of God;
In the face of naked death, you cannot escape.
The Mysterium Tremendum bears down on the soul
In a few highly condensed moments of divine Victory:
The Almighty alone is the All Mighty.

Listen for yourself:

45. Restless seas of sound

Restlessly I dreamed of you last night,
Herr Bruckner, spending semi-conscious hours
Seeking to understand what you are saying.
Your musical language is unique; it is you.
Some compositional influences are evident--
Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert--
But the musical sound and gestalt are yours alone,
Shared generously, prodigiously, with your listeners,
Whom you sweep along in dynamic waves of sound.

For hours I’ve sought to get a sense of you
In and through your enormous symphonies;
The more I listen attentively, thoughtfully,
The more alive and present you become to me.
Your musical vision is unitary, wholistic,
Organic, total, continual, all-encompassing.
The true analogues I find for your symphonies,
Your masterworks, are flowing-rushing rivers--
Or better, endlessly restless surging seas.

Your melodies stream in as piece-meal fragments
Within an ineluctably unfolding rich harmonic flow,
A mighty river, a living sea of overwhelming sounds
Sweeping along all being-things within one expanse,
Within one ever-expanding universe of sound.
Waves of your music keep washing over the mind
Familiarly unfamiliar, inviting, uplifting, compelling,
But to what you are leading your enchanted listeners
One wonders, caressed and tossed about as in a dream.

You’ve drawn me into your seething seas, my friend,
Your dynamic-titanic oceans of surging sounds,
Living seas, powerful, stormy, restless, and searching,
Passionate but not Wagner-erotic,
Tempestuous, but not Beethoven-raging.
Your bemusing music, expressing your psyche, entices me
Out from safe-secure land into your deep ever-surging seas,
Pulling me under the churning lunging plunging surf,
Not to drown, but to waken me to the beauty of life unfolding
In the playful-serious cosmos that transcends all understanding.

46. The gift of isolation

Pity me not, my friend, for isolation,
For months spent apart from friends,
For the kind of feelings expressed
In my poem, “Cemetery town.”
Do not pity me, for nothing is lost,
No lasting harm has been done,
And insights have been gained.

The way to self-knowledge and sobriety
Is a long, steep climb, as Plato recounts
In his “Allegory of the Cave.”
How often does it take suffering to teach us
Who we are, and how to live well?
In no way do I regret my time in Sheridan,
For in solitude and quiet, I have written.

Now that an end is in sight to isolation here,
As I’ll return to live where I have friends,
Now I feel some regret at leaving:
That I did not make better use of time
In silence, far removed from the noise
Of typical American life, often meaningless
And unnourishing to the spirit, to you within.

The benefits of solitude must be retained:
Hours alone each day to think and to write,
To read and to respond to others,
To be mindful of the world of nature
And the being of the world in God.
Pity me not, dear friend, in isolation,
For here I find what matters most in life:

In the desert my seagull soul has again taken flight
From cemetery town into a more germinating life
Not fleeing from here to a dream-land nowhere
But into silent-still moments of undulating presence.

In solitude the soul will lose itself
In one way or another:
Into a dissolution of drives and obsessions,
Or into the presence that feels like emptiness,
Into the void that is not annihilation
Or not that only, but self-transcendence,
A return to that from which all is flowing forth.

47. Light

The electric light by my bedside
By which I rise and dress;
The light in the kitchen,
By which I prepare a graham cracker
Spreading on some peanut butter;
The light on the coffee maker,
Glowing red and green;
The light of fire from the gas fireplace,
And the bright light by my reading chair
In the living room, where I’m sitting;

The light of the computer screen,
Allowing me to see what I write;
The light that radiates in the living room,
Showing that Moses sleeps and wakes.
The light of thought by which words arise

To consciousness, are considered, are chosen;
The light of judgment by which I consider the truth
Or falsity of what has been written;
The light that is awaited, consciously or not,
Ever present and seemingly available,
Whether attended to or not;
The light that’s awaited to cleanse and heal
And in time out of time to transform and fulfill;
The light of inner peace and happiness
That I sense as I sit writing by the fire;
The light of the stars reflecting on snow outside,
Visible through frozen windows;
And the light of the sun that will in time arise,
Slowly spread its living rays across the sky,
And bathe the world in welcome, warming light.

Is there a light of lights shining in every light?
Is there a light of mind receiving every light?
Is there a light beyond all lights
That will never fade and never end?
Is there a light from which all being-things come forth
And to which each through death returns?
Is there an ever-present light
To which the conscious mind is moved to ascend?
Is there a light in me that recognizes and loves
The light that radiates in you?

48. Nearly 0200

Now is the time when I’m most likely to write.
Darkness reigns outside, pierced by some light,
The dogs are resting: Elijah on the bed curled tight,
The older one, Moses, lying just off to my right;
Now is the time when I feel drawn to write.

One moves and works in daylight, not at night;
Now is the gifted time each day, to rest or to write,
When nothing presses to be done, nothing that might
Force me to rise from sitting, turn on a light,
Drag my body through space-time, in hurried flight

From one task to another while longing to alight
Back to my chair to sit still, to think, to write.
Rarely do I sit tight in light, but work until night,
Waiting til my stilled body lets the mind take flight
To write, and write, until daylight replaces night.

49. What have we done to ourselves?

When does a country cease to be itself?
When is a human being no longer himself?
As the human carriers of culture die off
What replaces them? What becomes of us,
Of who and what we have been in history?

“Everything that comes to be must perish.”
The dream of a “new order of the ages”
That would last on earth was an illusion,
Grounded on desire and a break from reality,
Ignoring the rhythm of coming-to-be and passing.

Consciousness of our roots, and hence of ourselves,
Has largely withered away in the currents of time.
We are a people adrift in riotous uncertain seas,
Lost in the heaving ocean of superficial changes,
Not attending to what makes us who we are.

When was America not passing away?
What remains to hold us together as a people?
How thin the gruel of popular mass culture;
How meaningless the bonds nourished by Hollywood.
What remains to make us one on earth in time?

How long can a people ignorant of themselves exist?
What becomes of a country whose elites are decultured,
Who show little knowledge of who and what we are?
What prevents a more energetic, expansive people
From taking over the land of self-indulgent ignoramuses?

“Amerika, du hast es besser,” wrote Goethe centuries ago.
America, you had it better, and how did you spend yourself?
What have we done with our rich inheritance?
What have we loved that is truly noble and good?
What lasting truth have we embodied in words and deeds?

“We the People” are smothered in entertainment;
Like children playing with dung in a sandbox,
So are “We the People” playing with poisons
That we willingly drink because we like the flavors--
Strawberry, grape, lemon, or Mandarin orange?

Our rulers have been empowered in power for too long--
Some even look and sound like dead men walking.
Self-styled “public servants” feeding at the trough,
Fattened up on ill-begotten power and wealth,
Serving themselves and their own and not We the People.

Manipulating the masses to gain political power
And to keep and to grow power at all costs;
And perhaps even worse, to impose their “dreams,”
Their fanciful nightmares onto others,
Pliable victims of their deceiving heart and lying lips.

The rulers of our country, gathered in Washington--
In that imperial megalopolis along the Potomac--
Are probably not worse than the worst who ruled Rome,
Probably no worse than wicked tyrants of the past,
Except ours strut about as self-proclaimed “public servants.”

Why should people in Montana or Texas or South Carolina
Allow themselves to be dominated from the capital,
From the imperial cesspool of power and corruption?
Why do we in the “hinterlands,” the “fly-over states,”
Allow ourselves to be ruled by such empty human beings?

We Americans allow our rulers to have such power,
Their ill-begotten wealth, their masked illusions,
And we drug ourselves with Jack Daniels, marijuana,
Or the latest sensual garbage produced by Hollywood.
We deaden ourselves to our putrefying corpse.

How much lower can we as a people sink
And still think that we are alive? Are we not dead already?
Are we still alive as a people in history,
Or have we dissolved into an amorphous slime
Under the feet of the State ruled by the knowing elites?

How much worse can our rulers become
Before we realize what and who they are?
If we powerless in America were not so dead ourselves
How would we tolerate the power of these people
Who are drunk on the blood of Americans?

They live by letting us destroy ourselves--
Killing our infants, polluting the minds of our children,
Deadening our sensibilities with various drugs,
Swishing as pigs in a sea of feces and mud--
And letting them do as they wish and will.

We have done this to ourselves, America.
And have only ourselves to blame.
We the People have become sated spoiled brats.
How painful to see what we are doing to ourselves,
How we who rejected God are wallowing in death.

50. Out of the cesspool

As a young man, I went to Washington to teach.
Visiting DC from beautiful Santa Barbara on the sea,
I was deeply disturbed by the ugliness I saw:
The shabby college campus imprisoned in a filthy city,
Filled with self-important east-coast pretenders.

A fellow student from California visited me in the fall,
Perhaps in late September of my first year back east.
“What’s the difference between Washington and Babylon?”
I asked him and gave the answer: “It rains in Washington.”
He may not have understood the prophetic reference.

Had it not been for the need to support myself
I would never have moved to Washington.
At first I was charmed by seeing the Capitol at night,
The large dome imposingly lit up in its imperial glow
That externally expressed my still-hidden love for power.

Had I been self-supporting and far more humble,
Never would I have moved to muggy Washington,
Nor entered a monastery cemented within the city.
Although thankful for spiritual benefits experienced,
My love of power blinded me to the harsh reality.

How thankful that I am not living in Washington,
Not immersed in the arrogance of self-importance
I found oozing from many sweaty pores
In that swampy, dense, dirty urban environment
Where power-seekers gather for their frequent fix.

I could no more willingly return to live in Washington
Than I could immerse myself in a cesspool bath.
The stench of deceit and death hangs over the city;
And even in the halls and cells of St. Anselm’s
I could smell the rotting bodies of the ruling class.

Why did I remain in a place so disgusting to me?
Why did I enter a monastery built in the cesspool?
I was seeking God, I believe, but would not yet let go
Of the allure of power and prestige that Washington feeds:
I entombed myself all-too-near the marble halls of power.

If self-styled “religious authorities” commanded me
To return to the monastery where years ago I took vows,
I would feel compelled to declare independence
On the grounds that to bury myself in the city of death
Is a fate I could not sanely or rightfully choose.

No one needs to be in a monastery to seek God.
No one needs to inhabit the city of death to find life.
No one should so disrespect his truer, better self
That he would willingly live in a sewer of humanity,
Dwelling in the city that’s drunk on power and prestige.

51. City of death
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,
But unto God the things that are God’s.”

America, land beloved, our imperious capital city
Has become the captive nation’s city of death.
The best it has to offer are museums and concerts;
The worst it offers are the basest forces of humanity.

Break away, America, from this captivating capital,
Sick and swollen head of our diseased body politic.
Break away by ignoring their false words and hypocrisies,
Realizing that they are not rightfully ruling over us.

We the people require better than Washington, DC,
Better than the city of death sprawling along the Potomac.
Obey outwardly as if forced at the barrel of a gun,
While seeking inwardly to be free from their tyrannical sway.

You can take our money, you bloated city of death,
You can write your unjust orders and ridiculous laws,
Preventing us from being free and at peace in America;
But the hearts of a free people will never love you.

City of death, you spiritual necropolis-metropolis,
You have betrayed your just authority over us.
Filled with your lust for power, position, and wealth,
You are imperial-imperious impostors, not our true rulers.

The revolution of the spirit by the spirit has begun:
A deliberately chosen mental and spiritual break
From the city of death and its pompous ruling class
And from the nightmare schemes they generate.

The revolution must begin in our hearts and minds--
In those who still have hearts and minds--
A revolution of the people, by the people, for the people--
Who refuse to be held captive and awed by the city of death.

America, our America, you must strive for far better.
Courageously cast off the yoke of enslaving Washington,
Regrounding yourselves not on human arrogance and deceit,
But on the truth and judgment of the living God.

52. Escape from the city of death

By being willing to die
I escaped from the city of death.
Had I not accepted dying on a battlefield
I may have mummified in Washington.

I heeded the call as a Navy chaplain
To serve Marines headed to the Gulf,
Where many were expected to return home
In row upon row of body bags.

Had I not accepted death on a battlefield
Would I not have died ignobly in Washington?
By gracing me to accept dying for our country,
God drew me out from the city of death.

Only through accepting one’s death
Does a human being find true life.
Only by choosing to surrender to a noble death
Can one find a life worthy of a human being.

Surely that is the lesson of Socrates,
The lesson of Jesus of Nazareth,
The lesson of martyrs to truth and justice:
No one finds true life without willingness to die.

But was it truly the LORD who was calling me?
One never knows the divine will with certainty.
I sought divine guidance, trusted, and acted,
And thereby underwent metánoia, a change of heart:

From a monk praying in a Washington monastery
I became a Navy chaplain serving overseas with Marines;
From a man entombed in the city of death,
I found true life in mud and ice on Mount Fuji.

Only willingness to die brings true life;
Only through accepting one’s death,
Accepting that all in this world is passing,
And that God alone is truly God.

The decisive experience, the radical turn
From dying-in-self into genuine human life
Reached its climax as I walked alone in sunlight
At the Buddha-tomb in Gotemba, Japan

Now I see what grace it was to feel my death,
To realize how painfully empty I had become
By failing to acknowledge God’s providence,
In effect thwarting the divine will in me.

“LORD, why did you bring me here to die?”
To my anguished question I found the answer
At the Buddha-shrine on a day in March of 1992,
Forced by agony to admit my own defeat.

What was the actual experience of return?
What realization broke into my mind and heart?
It was a bold leap of faith that God brought me here
For His purposes beyond my understanding.

Faith that is not doctrinal belief, but naked trust alone--
Not knowing, having no proof, without blissful feelings--
But exactly in the midst of inner pain and emptiness
The suffering soul surrenders itself to God.

By the hidden and masterful activity of God
I myself made a free, firm, and decisive choice:
I chose to accept my pain and emptiness,
Trusting that God knows what He is doing.

The soul without God is a micro-city of death,
The inner wasteland of which death’s city is filled.
The will to power indeed kills the soul,
As does a lack of simple self-abandoning trust.

To realize that one’s stretched out on the operating table,
Naked and cut open beneath the hands of God;
To choose to accept that only One truly knows
What and why and who is working on us and in us.

“O the depths of the riches and the wisdom of God.”
Unless and until one makes a complete surrender,
Accepting that one’s whole being belongs solely to God,
Who alone knows what and why He is acting--

Unless one chooses to trust divine goodness,
Dying to all one is, one cannot and does not find life.
Then the city of man becomes the city of death
Inhabited by the living dead who refuse to die,
Who are dead because they will not die.

53. A note on writing

“The well has run dry,” I have said and written,
Feeling that I could find no more words,
That I could no longer conceive of a question,
Examine an experience, or wonder at beauty.

Then I think: When the well runs dry, write!
Do not wait for the right feeling or moment,
But “carpe diem,” “seize the day,”
Make hay in sunshine, or clean the barn in rain.

On the soul’s winged ascent--
On the journey of the mind into God--
One must often travel the way in darkness,
Faring forward without knowing where one is going.

To use a different metaphor:
One leaves the house in darkness,
Walking step by step without seeing the way,
And trusting that one will arrive--

That either one will arrive at the destination,
Or one will turn about in darkness
And set out once again in unlit search
Of that on which the heart has staked its life.

I had not planned to write on Bruckner,
Nor to explicate thoughts on the city of death,
Nor to relate my experience at the Buddha-shrine,
Nor to find transformation in cemetery town:

One must boldly and trustingly go forward
Allowing thoughts to arise in the process;
For Fortune does indeed favor the bold,
Most favoring those who risk all for love.

For love? How am I risking anything for love?
There is ever in the shadows the formless one
Who in moments seemingly out of time into time
Suddenly lifts the veil—not on Itself—but in my soul.

In my efforts to write, I seek to return
Gratitude for the one who boundlessly loves me.
I write in order for my winged soul to take flight
Toward or into that out of which all comes.

54. Invisible hand

A child wants to know where he is going;
A middle aged man blazes his own trail;
An old man stretches out his hand
And is gently led by a stranger in the night.

Thrashing in my sleep restlessly
My hand must have reached out
For suddenly I became aware
That my hand was not bare
But had within its touch a hand--
A hand of no one seen or heard,
But flesh touching flesh tenderly.

55. Consciousness coming to be

“I just threw gold into the fire,
And out jumped this calf.”

What Aaron said about his “golden calf,”
I say about my efforts at writing poetry.
(In Aaron’s case, it expresses Jewish wisdom,

Spoken with an undercurrent of humor,
That a reader does well to take lightly--
Something fundamentalists seem loathe to do.

The mind that composes in words or in sounds
Is a form of consciousness in formation,
A coming-to-be rather than a state of being.

In composing music or poetry, in practicing any art,
The artist, the maker, the poiétés,
Comes to be in and through his artistic endeavor.

As the mind of each artist is coming-to-be,
There is no perfect product, nothing “set in stone,”
No eternal words of God written perfectly in a book,

No prophet or philosopher who does not err.
“I never expect to see a perfect work
From an imperfect man,” Hamilton wisely said.

There is no “societas perfecta,” no “true church,”
No “infallible word of God,” no “new order of the ages,”
No “punctum Archimedis,” no utopia, and no third Rome.

The structures, strictures, even the fixed scriptures
Of the Catholic Church are not congenial to me.
They may be helpful to some, but constrict others.

“In the mountains, there you feel free.”
In the mountains I feel uncomfortably imprisoned,
Naturally restricted from far wider horizons.

There is no moment in which all is known,
No science without impartial and partial flaws,
No revelation that does not also obscure.

Inner freedom requires accepting imperfections,
Accepting the world, others, and ourselves
As we are, not as we wish we were.

Choosing to die nobly for goodness or truth,
Accepting the world in its imperfections,
Being at peace with reality: these are one.

Consciousness coming to be is ever incomplete,
Ever in a condition of growing and cutting off,
Letting go of all that does not profit,

And holding with open hands to what is good--
Not grasping, not restraining, not controlling,
And letting each unfold within the unbounded whole.

Each of us has our golden calves, Aaron.
For most of us it is wealth, beauty, pleasure, security;
For the worst among us, it is the will to dominate,

This secret drive buried in the hearts of our rulers
Which they embody in the fattest of all golden calves,
Now become a raging bull: the god of the bureaucratic State.

Mind your tasks at hand, exercise your art,
And to the extent possible, stay clear of politricks,
Seeking to become the human being you most truly are.

56. Nap now, and nap later!

You are approaching sixty:
Maybe its time to nap,
And time to learn the art of napping.

A nap, a siesta, is a gift to be lived.
Learning to take a nap is a form of meditation,
An act of humility, of surrender, of childlike trust.

When you approach seventy,
Take two daily take naps--
One after rising early and one in the afternoon.

And when you approach eighty, take one nap--
One long nap that lasts off and on all day
And continues through the night.

To nap well to is to prepare to die in peace.

57. Going down

To ascend one must first descend.
A man who will not go down
Is a man who will not rise up.
“He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Know and accept your littleness,
Even your essential nothingness.
Know what and why you do not know--
Know how unknowing you truly are.

Accept your essential nothingness,
For you are a human being, and not God--
All being-things are ever passing away
Back into the void from which they emerge.

Now I go down to the realm of sleep
Allowing myself to be dissolved
Into a dream-state of unknowing consciousness;
When and how and whether I’ll awake
Is unknown to me.

58. Ash Wednesday revisited

“Because I do not hope to turn again…”
Does this assertion make any sense? For whom?
Is Eliot speaking for himself, or for someone else?
Why would anyone cease to hope to return to God?

I hope to turn again—and again; to rise whenever I fall.
One must ever seek to turn towards the divine, and not delay.
For one does not know if he or she will truly turn again,
Rise when drawn—or become imprisoned in the dissolving self.

Am I still seeking, still turning around, or have I ossified?
One cannot know directly if one is in the divine presence,
Truly open and responding, or going through mere motions.
One can see the fruits of communion or of absence.

Can I recall any Ash Wednesday in my adult years
When I’ve been or felt so religiously indifferent?
Is being outwardly or even inwardly religious important
For a human being to do well, to be happy, to become good?

Having broken from institutional religion in decisive ways,
What remains to observe on Ash Wednesday?
To receive ashes imposed on the forehead? to what end?
The words spoken as ashes are imposed are worth recalling:

“Remember, man, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
And “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Such sayings deserve to be pondered, not merely heard.
Fascination with ashes limits many from taking the words seriously.

Why attend any religious services--
(Or any public services, for that matter?)
Outward rituals in the churches may well be disturbing,
Serving to arouse memories of injustices performed
In the name of “Holy Church,” or of Christ, or of God.

Why recite prayers aloud or attend services repeatedly?
Or why even recite scripted prayers in silence,
Again and again, often without consciously attending
To what the words mean, what they signify?
Such questions arise in the minds of many in these generations.

If one wishes to pray or sing to God, however understood,
Why not do so in ways that engage consciousness,
That require active attention and thinking?
Consider some meanings in words of prophets that one recalls,
Reminding one of duties to God and to neighbor:

“If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart.”
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall come my help?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”
“If you would be perfect, sell all that you have, and give to the poor;
Then come, follow me.”

***

If one hopes to turn, to what, to whom, does one turn?
“Have I been so long with you, Philip, and yet you do not know me?”
Before turning, are You not present, working silently and invisibly,
Ever unknown even if imagined, ever beyond the mind’s horizon,
Yet utterly present, the cause of each moment of life one has?
It is this unknown one and no other, to whom I must and will turn again.

I was seeking You, or rather, You were moving me to seek You,
And gradually I fell into the deadening routines of religious life.
These religious ways are not bad, and may be beneficial for some;
But for me the better way, the truer way, is apophatic,
Leaving externals behind, and stretching out in solitude,
In still emptiness, in the loneliness of a lonesome spirit.

Such solitude is more like You yourself:
Approachable but never approached;
Unknowably near yet beyond all images, senses, outward forms.
When I search for you among outer things and activities,
I find your effects, Unknown One, but not you yourself.
In sheer emptiness of spirit, in lonely solitude

When no one and nothing draws near--
No sight, no sound, no visions, no words--
Then You are present in experienced absence,
And absent to any grasping at your presence.
The externals may be stepping stones or stumbling blocks,
But joy awaits one who leaps naked and empty into your abyss.

59. To a god unknown

Who or what is it behind the masks
That we impose on your unseen face?
Who or what is the truly faceless one--
Ever present, yet unknown; here, yet not?

Who or what is the divine behind all gods--
The God beyond all gods and things--
That which is even if nothing else is--
That alone which is without existing?

I have called it “You” in my knowing ignorance--
Why should I assume that it is you?
“You” is a mask I place over the nameless abyss,
The wholly unfathomable depth grounding what exists.

And why call it “divine” or “a god” at all?
What terms, albeit clumsy, may be better?
Spirit? Intellect? Nous? That which simply is?
That out of which all arise, and in which all unfolds?

How to divest oneself of masks,
Of mere assumptions about what truly is?
How to become more open to its presence
And far less desiring of descriptions or experiences?

The names and stories may entice,
But they ever leave the mind unsatisfied.
No account does full or fair justice,
And every account has its partial truth to tell.

60. The unbeliever

I will never be at rest among believers
Nor will believers be at rest with me.
To believers, I’m an unbeliever, an infidel;
To me, they assume they know what they do not,
Substituting beliefs for naked trust in reality.

My soul finds no home in churchianity,
Not even in buildings that are artistically tasteful.
One’s spirit cannot roam freely in institutions,
Man-made and masquerading as divine.
One’s spirit comes alive in the truth of unknowing.

The older I grow, the less I’m willing to be
Institutionalized, imprisoned, strapped down
To the ways and beliefs of noisy true believers.
“I hate, I despise your festivals,” declares Amos;
“They are a stench to me.” Amen, brother.

Give me the openness of the empty-souled search,
The unmasking or dismissal of all religious pretense,
The stark emptiness of the spirit stripped
And at home alone in the homeless One.
Give me awareness suspending all assumptions.

61. The Bernini Colonnade

The Bernini columns standing outside St. Peter’s--
When first I saw and touched the travertine columns
Intense rage spontaneously welled up in me.
“The Roman Empire lives on in the Catholic Church
With its glorification of over-awing power.”

It was the winter of ’96, my first and only visit to Rome,
A few months after my initiating personal experience
With a bishop of the Catholic Church, an over-powering man
Who bullied and berated me, then expelled me from his diocese,
Demonstrating to me viscerally the Church’s will to dominate.

Bernini’s columns have a grandeur worth beholding--
Massive, tall, smooth, rhythmic majestic beauty,
Truly an astounding work of seventeenth century engineering.
But how are they apt for a church dedicated to humble saint Peter?
The love of power and glory is antithetical to God.

The Church has long modeled itself on imperial Rome,
And Gnostic movements model themselves on the Church.
In its love of power the Church represents not Christ or God
But the all-too-human will to dominate and to deceive.
In its spiritual sickness, the Church prefigures modern politics.

How does one break free from ecclesiastical tyranny?
How does one break free from Gnostic global empires?
Not by hatred nor rebellion, for by these one is self-imprisoned;
Only In renouncing one’s own lust for power does a man become free,
And able to watch the raging storms of human strivings pass by.

After seeing the overwhelming Bernini Columns, I visited Assisi;
Descending from the train, I felt the peace of God descend into me--
A peace mediated, I believed, through San Francesco e Santa Ciara.
Nowhere before had I so tangibly felt such soothing peace,
A gentle caressing of my spirit externalized in the refreshing mist of Assisi.

In the peace from true saints which God alone can give
I returned to Rome to visit the priest who had confirmed me--
(A good man who later become Archbishop of New York)
And I returned to visit St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
Free in spirit I now overlooked the display of power and wealth;

Just inside the palatial church, clothed in mesmerizing marbles,
I suddenly beheld young Michelangelo’s first Pietá.
Spontaneously I dropped to my knees before the liquid statue,
Flooded by awe at such beauty, grace, and strength
Displayed in noble Mary, holding in her arms her crucified son.

The true glory of the Church is not in power or in spectacle,
But in the loving wisdom and peace of solid human saints
And in the astonishing blossoming of superb artistic gifts
Inspired in faith-filled men and women through the ages.
Not in the arrogance of office and power, but in lowliness,
The exalted beauty of the Catholic Church shines through.

62. The retreat

Sheridan, you have been good for me,
Set in high desert, nested by the Tobacco Roots;
Still and quiet nearly every hour of every day.
Such soothing silence rarely found in manic America,
Or found by few, as we rush through our lives.

Nearly a year and a half in your bosom, Sheridan,
And most of the time spent alone on a quiet retreat--
Withdrawn from talking, socializing, seeing friends,
From the noise and confusions of urban life.
Generous time alone to think and to write,

Sheridan, a stream of little poems unsuspected
To lie in my mind or heart, waiting quietly for birth.
You’ve drawn forth from me more effort in writing
Than I’ve known before, at least since my youth
When I labored long on a forced dissertation.

You’ve given me time and opportunities to think,
To walk with my dogs, to plant trees, to do chores,
To read and especially to write, free from distractions,
Free from seeking to meet others’ expectations,
Free from beliefs or thoughts that have grown old.

Only in shorthand do I call these scribblings “poems.”
I eschew the structures of fixed rhymes or meters,
Aiming more at truthfulness than at poetic beauty.
Truth remains for me the measure of my words,
Allowing the rest to float away with the waters of a creek,

Mill Creek, arising somewhere in the Tobacco Roots--
I know not where—and passing through Sheridan,
Somewhere joining the Ruby, then the Jefferson,
Forming the mighty Missouri, and flowing ever away
Out to sea in the Gulf, hence into all oceans,

For all are one. As we walk along the Missouri at Great Falls
We shall be mindful of Mill Creek’s crystal waters,
Now flowing by unseen, utterly mixed with other waters,
Flowing as life flows away in old Moses, in younger Elijah,
And in me, an old man looking and longing for the ocean.

Quiet meditation transcends all that is written--
But there’s a time to speak and to write,
And a time to sit or walk alone in lovely lonely silence.
Writing seems to be integral to my soul’s ascent
Indifferent to whether anyone reads these words or not.

Ascend to the light
Under the quiet light of reason.
Ascend to the light
In silence and in solitude.
Ascend to the light
And disappear into night.

—Wm. Paul McKane
24 February 2021