MEISTER ECKHART
1
The Son of Man is in revolt
Against the god of men.
The Son of God who took the fault
Of men away from them
To lay it in himself on God,
Has nowhere now to lay God’s head
But in the heart of human solitude.
2
The way to Life is through the entrance into Night:
The recognition of the Night wherein each man
Must have at first existence: knowing not
The Whole, and yet believing that he knows,
And through such blind belief made blind to Truth.
Truth is that Truth must first remain unknown to me:
That in the unknown dark I feel alone.
In this state only can true being wake
To knowledge of itself through consciousness
Of the non-entity that it is born from and of the desire
For Being, Truth and Light and Human Day.
3
Dear Nameless God, must I say Thee
When I address you? or should I now try
When speaking in close intimacy to friends
To call them Thou, and make sincere and true
What has become archaic in a world of falsity?
An overwhelming contradiction rends
Apart all possibility of our addressing You
Until we have within ourselves made one
The will to self-exist and our desire to be:
To be with God, and not pseudo-divine
Scorn-inspired self-deceivers dreading most to be alone.
4
This world remains ‘the World’,
An empire under rule
Of a confederacy of lone wolf-hearted birds:
Imperial eagles, each unrecognized
Except by his own world.
No self-reliant haughty bird of prey
Can rule the world wearing an Emperor’s crown.
The ancient eyrie-world remains grimly convinced
That no society can thrive without ‘religion’;
And every now and then duly inaugurates
Another mission drive to raise the same old corpse.
5
That there is Justice in the world
Even the fool who hath said in his heart
There is no God
Would be unlikely wholly to deny:
But if he did, even he would not be such a fool
As the man who declares that there is Justice in the world
And that he can not only see it plainly but must proceed to administer it with perfect justice.
There is no perfectly just man
Because the vision of Justice is the pleasure of God alone.
And that is why the divine part in all men
Longs to see justice and to live by it;
While the enemy of God that is in each of us
Is always trying to make us satisfied with what we can see of Justice without God,
As though He were bound to ratify automatically
Whatever a man-made judge with his own reason decides is just
Provided a sufficiently large number of other men be persuaded to agree with him.
6
There are no harsh laws,
Only laws that in a self-respecting society would be regarded as unnecessary.
There are harsh souls and law-encumbered spirits
Who inflict their conception of decency
On men and half-animals and human beings alike;
Who expect our respect
And would not seriously believe it if told we could feel none for them.
7
Really religious people are rarely looked upon as such
By those to whom religion is secretly something unreal;
And those the world regards as extremely religious people
Are generally people to whom the living God will seem at first an appalling scandal;
Just as Jesus seemed a dangerously subversive Sabbath-breaker
Whom only uneducated fishermen, tavern talkers and a few blue-stockings of dubious morals
Were likely after all to take very seriously,
To the most devoutly religious people in Jerusalem in Jesus’s day.
Let the dead continue to bury the dead as they did then,
And let the living dead awaken and greet with joy the ever-living.
8
Always, wherever, whatever, however,
When I am able to resist
For once the constant pressure of the failure to exist,
Let me remember
That truly to be man is to be man aware of Thee
And unafraid to be. So help me God.
9
Christ was hung up to die between two thieves;
And much mirth did the spectacle arouse
Among the populace who’d heard Him say
That He was One with God and their true King:
Look at Him now! It’s strange that God allows
His Son to come to grief like that, they cried;
All such pretentious scoundrels end that way!
God’s Son! Whoever heard of such a thing?
There hangs our King, a thief on either side!
For Christ was executed by the general will,
Officially and popularly execrated, thrust
Out of this life in ignominy, put
To death outside the righteous City’s wall:
An unsuccessful outlaw and a grim warning to all
Who would disturb Pax Romana with thought,
With the unmanly doctrine that all men
Should love fraternally their fellow man
Instead of warrior-like despising him.
10
Though towards the suburbs the city becomes wan
And dark with the weariness of the women who have to queue
Outside the horse-butcher’s or for the home-bound bus,
On even the busiest days the sun sometimes paints propaganda
For the possibility of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth
Over the prices scrawled in white on the shops’ plate-glass,
And the attic window-boxes above the market
Offer tribute of happy beauty to the omniscient Heavenly Eye.
c. 1950
THE SECOND COMING
In the dream theatre, my seat was on the balcony, and the auditorium had been partly converted into an extension of the stage. Several little Italia Conti girls ran forward past my seat from somewhere behind me, and one of them clambered over a ledge and seemed to fall (she must have been suspended by a wire) to the floor below. She gave a small scream: ‘God is born!’ On a little nest of straw on the ground close to where she had fallen, a baby doll suddenly appeared. At the same moment, a hideous scarecrow-like Svengali-Rasputin figure, mask larger than life-size and painted rather like an evil clown in a Chagall apocalypse, playing an enormous violin which somehow contrived also to suggest the scythe of Father Time, rose upon the circular dais in the centre of the auditorium. I realized at once that he was the personification of Sin and Death. ‘When I play my tune, there is not a single one of you all who does not join the dance!’ I was most painfully moved by the strident yet cajoling music and by the knowledge that what he had said was nothing less than the truth. Everything then began to move around confusingly. On the darkened stage, thick black gauze curtains had lifted, and one saw a squat black cross outlined against a streak of haggard white storm light across the back-cloth sky. Finally, the stage was full of menacing, jerkily swaying bogies, thick black distorted crucifixes with white slit eyes, covered with newspaper propaganda headlines, advancing towards the audience like a ju-ju ceremonial dance of medicine men. At the very end of the performance, a clearly ringing voice, representing the light which must increasingly prevail against these figures, cried: ‘All propaganda that is not true Christian revolutionary propaganda is sickness an
d falsehood!’
c. 1950
A LITTLE ZODIAK FOR KATHLEEN RAINE
ARIES
Augustly awe-inspiring creature, whose famed Fleece
And cornucopiae-like Mosaic Horns of gold
Foreglimmer from afar the Great Year’s harvest of pure peace;
Entangled in the thicket of the World Roof-Tree’s dense leaves,
Immortal Ram, like Absalom dangling his slain youth’s gold
Caught on an oak bough in the wood, for whom the Father grieves:
Suspended is your splendour in the domed space of the dark,
O scion of the sacred flock, in scripture spelt of gold
The legend of your leap ever recorded in mid-arc.
GEMINI
Each looks towards his brother and sees yet one more than him,
In friendship with each other sealed, they both remain unmet.
Their eyes still gaze towards the misty heights that precede Time;
Whatever one of them looks on, the other will forget.
TAURUS
Lunging Beast,
Bulging hide,
Fatalist
Ruby-eyed,
In coiled maze
Or sordid ring
Blood betrays
Butcher King.
CANCER
This fishy thing that sideways crawls
But neither swims nor flies,
Elects to dwell in shellac walls
And has protruding eyes.
About this sign I’ve nothing more to say.
I’m not born in or near it anyway.
LEO
No smaller than the Sun amidst the mid-day sky,
With oriflamme-spiked ruff of red mane stands
This calm carnivorous King
On tufted turf among
The gentle field-flowers of his wild domain; And brands
With tawny patch of scorch
The green herbaceous velvet ground on which
The leonine supremacy is thus embroidered plain.
VIRGO
Where waterfalls and willows and interstices
Of nightblue undissolved by day perform
The offices of backcloth and of trellises
For briars in bloom to climb upon and swarm
With emblems white and red
About her uncoiffed head,
A young lady sequestered and immaculate,
Scarce asking whether any less hermetic state
Await her, may be seen
Plaiting a garland green
For Chastity to wear when she is dead.
LIBRA
O unjust man behold
How she must stand blindfold
Who personates the word
Justice, and in one hand
Wield naked sword as wand
Who with the other lets
Two equidistant plates
Dangle, while she forgets
Which yours is, which your fate’s.
SCORPIO
Here is a beastly jewel!
Its tail can cause to groan.
If scorned or feared it will
Lurk under every stone
On the wide avenue towards Success
That seems to lead out of the wilderness.
SAGITTARIUS
I, Father, with my little Bow
Plant my munitions high and low;
Trusting, should they shoot up by night
The buried dragon will not bite.
CAPRICORN
Alone alike elect on heights of prophecy
And exiled on the darkling plain of Chance,
Trailing the guilt that makes worlds wildernesses, he
Performs his tragi-comic limping dance.
AQUARIUS
This burly bent, much burdened figure, who
Is he, I wonder, and what does he do?
Old Atlas, is it, staunchly straining still?
Atlas? Oh, no. This man’s about to spill
Into some hold from his pot lots of sea.
Of sea? I see. – Unless it’s Hippocrene. –
But it’s not pink, I think, as that would be.
Perhaps it’s just plain drinking-water? – Yes,
That probably would be the wisest guess.
PISCES
They glitter, but they sing
Seldom; rather than swim
They slide through that thick element the waves
Roof in; swing the slow loop
Of a lassoo through which
In reflex they can swoop
And thus with cunning catch
In their own track themselves. And then they sweep
Down sheerest slopes
And swerve
Round sharpest curves
And leap abruptly up, like swift sea-larks,
To burst through their sky’s rolling clouds of foam
And briefly warble, before sinking home,
A stave of bubble-song; to which no sailor harks.
p. 1950
AFTER TWENTY SPRINGS
How vehemently and with what primavernal fire
Has there been voiced the seasonal conviction that new birth,
Aurora, revolution, resurrection from the dead,
Palingenesia, was about to be, was near,
Must surely come. Of course it shall, it must.
The bones shall live, the dust awake and sing.
I hope and trust I shall be there. But seriously,
If it has not already come, and it is we
Who lack the faith to recognize it, if the sun
That shone upon the just and unjust does not shine
This spring upon the risen dead, then what a long
Business this getting born again must be. We dead
Are living, really; and the living are asleep,
Lawrence; and gladly in their sleep they read
The Twentieth Anniversary reprint of your writings, stirred
Fitfully for a while to more impassioned dream.
For many love you now, Redbeard, and wish you had not died
In bitterness, before your time. On dead man’s isle,
We who survived you and are struggling still today
(If very feebly and unostentatiously)
For life, more life, new life, fine warm full-blooded life,
Are reconciled with patience, on commemorating you.
LIGHT VERSE
AN UNSAGACIOUS ANIMAL or THE TRIUMPH OF ART OVER NATURE
The Master of The Monarch of the Glen
Was making once a sojourn ’neath the roof
Of an admiring Peer, Lord Rivers, when
Occasion rose which put to sternest proof
That intrepidity and tact which had
Secured for him familiar intercourse
With Nature’s greatest gentlemen and made
Him reverenced alike by man and horse.
For while his fellow guests one afternoon
Were raptly gleaning Landseer’s dicta, sound
Of lawless canine truculence, which soon
Became intolerable, made him pound
With sudden fist the tea table and cry:
‘What insolence of importuning cur,
What rumour as of kennel mutiny
Is this? Shall Man the Master then defer
To a hound’s ill-bred fury? Follow me:
Let’s to the stable-yard whence these barks come,
And I will prove to you that Art can be
A force more sure than blows to make dogs dumb.
I who not seldom with forbidding gaze
Have known how to persuade huge Highland kine
To emulate the Southern cow’s sweet ways
And made whole shaggy herds hang on the line,
Will there, if it amuse you, demonstrate
A sovereign power yet stronger than the eye’s:
That of the Human Voice, which is so great
That it can Lions strike d
umb with surprise!’
Some of the painter’s intimates had been
Already privileged to hear his skill
In imitation of the less obscene
Sounds with which animals are wont to fill
The atmosphere of jungle, swamp and glade
When moved by meal-time longings or by bliss
To self-expression. For some years he’d made
The feat his study, and could bellow, hiss,
Roar, bark, snarl, with a realism which
Was quite astonishing, till in no part
Of all Victoria’s realms was known so rich
A repertoire of Imitative Art
As that perfected by the great R.A.
In view of this, it hardly will seem queer
To any that all present there that day
Excitedly accompanied Landseer
Out to the stables, craning and agog,
To watch him stride, masterfully serene,
Towards the kennel out of which the dog
Surveyed defiantly the crowded scene
With jaws aslaver and keen fangs exposed.
Then, not without surprise, they saw him fall
Down on his knees! It was by some supposed
This was in order piously to call
On Providence for aid; but they were wrong.
His aim was to confront the renegade
As man to man (or – dog to dog?). Ere long
That wretched animal’s vile din was made
To seem the fretful yap of Pekinese
By an appallingly hyenine bark
Which evidently made the dog’s blood freeze,
For his rebellion ceased at once, and stark
Terror replaced the murder in his eye.
The artful mimicry of Landseer proved
So awful that the beast which recently
Had rivalled Cerberus himself, now moved
With such violence away from the advance
Of the superior barker, that his chain
Snapped, and he crossed the yard swift as a glance,
Leaped o’er the wall, and never was again
Seen anywhere on Lord Rivers’ estate.
Landseer, on rising, found that only one
Of those who’d watched him still remained to fête
His triumph. ’Twas his host, who breathed: ‘What fun!
How good of you to teach them how, dear old
Dog-lover! But come now, your tea’s quite cold.’
p. 1949
LE DÉJEUNER SUR L’HERBE: A PASTORAL
LA BELLE-DAME-SANS-MERCERIE:
Thank goodness, mes chers amis, that you do not