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Hiroshima, August 6th,
Nineteen forty five,
The Feast of the Transfiguration.
Twelve men like apostles
Look down on the city
Shining bright as the sun,
And they are afraid
At the cloud that overshadows it
With a noise that could drown
The very voice of God;
Leaving behind men
To rebuild on this Tabor
The tabernacles of their lives;
And Moses, looking on,
Says: ‘oppress not the stranger,
For the stranger’s soul is your own’;
And Elijah beside him:
‘How long will you limp
On two crutches, two gods?
If the Lord is your God,
Follow him.’ Know you not that this feast
At the end of the year,
Is the ingathering of the harvest;
Know you not that the chaff,
At the end of the years,
Will be burned in the flames?
Know you not that on Carmel
The twelve stones of the altar,
Like twelve honest airmen,
Too were consumed
By the fire of God? “These are all just old stories,
Don’t get lost in the details,
The coincident numbers,
The strange concord of dates;
Just know that God loves you,
And go forth rejoicing;
That’s all that you need;
That’s all that it says.”
But sometimes we glimpse,
Through eyes blind with the glory
Of seizing the vision of God once too soon,
The shadowy likeness
Similitudo tenebrosa
Between the world as it would be
And the world as it is,
Between the world that’s transfigured
Without crucifixion
And the world that must rise
From the dead:
Sometimes we glimpse
The obsidian mirror
Of a world that shows somehow
Both less and more than it is. |
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