CANTO III: MUTINY

—Pssst! Come on!

(Gunshots in Sarajevo)

The Vatican is dark. All Rome is dark…

—Inside. Inside.

(The newsreels rolodex

with grainy black-and-white

an archduke’s death)

A summer night. The moon is cold and stark

as men cast shadows through the colonnade.

—That’s all then? —No, I saw more coming. —Where?

—Conciliazione. —Good. Good good…

The delegates go in. The air is chill

and near-autumnal—even ominous

with fall—as all the hushed conspirators

assemble—silent, secret—through the stone

façade of Peter’s.

Creaking doors…

Inside,

wafting within the cavern Vatican,

shoe-claps on stone reverberate through tall

titanic columns—and the spangled dome,

ribbed with Apostles, echoing their din…

Still, all continued through the Papal palace,

passing the maps and tapestries of power,

till the whole group (like suited types of those

more softly pictured by The School of Athens)

at last swarmed thickly to the painted shrine:

the Sistine Chapel.

Here they congregate

to hold a covert parliament: debate

a war to end the spiritual, and rid

a chafing planet of its over-Lord…

Soon, under frescoes (lit by quivering light

from trident-candelabras’ flickering fires),

this furtive congress dimmed its murmuring

and whispered disarray, when, up the steps,

the first to speak ascended—taking stand

before the altar as his stage—and, flanked

by Doomsday,

waited for the lull…

His eyes

flare back the tapers’ blaze. His darkened brows

survey in silent rounds… In hand he holds

a cypress staff, whose marriage with a robe

that flows in purple plumes is guise enough

to lose him in the walls, these painted prophets.

They call him “Job.” But if that’s moniker

or namesake, no one’s sure—he’s simply Job:

a weathered man of carob leathered skin,

once wealthy in the Congo (so they say)

but now a beggared, ragged refugee

and ruined immigrant—whose frame (old bones

within old rags and tattered clothes) holds sway,

like something ominous, before the people.

The crowd fell still beneath his pregnant glare,

dimming quiescence from a shared respect,

till (planet-heavy silence bearing down)

the graybeard black man—fire-eyed… solemn—spoke:

“So…

Here we are.

At weighing wars with Heaven?”

(He grimaced deep, and scanned the eager room…)

“Yet I would know:

who prates of peace?” (his eyes

imploring) “…Who… who here’s a coward? Claims

we monger ‘wanton’ war? Who does not see

these corpses at our feet? The death toll rises…

I—I myself was nearly taken in His teeth!

…I—I have striven with the LORD throughout

my night of living—wrestling with his plagues—

no? begging blessing? truce? some settlement?

a giving Heaven? Still, when pleas for pacts

and treaties go unheeded—messengers

as swift as prayer unwelcomed; and doves die,

lost to the sea, that would beak back some olive

from the world’s Summit, ending flood on flood—

what can one do but weep

…then take up arms

against the One who ‘l o v e s’ us?

Let the weak

escape the field—but those who’d breathe must fight!

Grapple with Him, who gives to take—who takes

what peace we’d hoard! Fight for a cot, a smile—

some ray of light beneath these thunderheads

of God. See: I am not afraid of war,

but only of these painful terms of peace

beneath a God-who-wrestles, waging war

on Earth.

“You’d have more speeches—endless talk.

Have we not learned the value of our words?

When we awake, and find our castles stormed,

plundered at night by Whom we trusted most

and set as Guard upon our treasures: health

and hearth,

our families—and

our children…

—AH!

Damn the rich life!—achievement—wealth! God damn

all things but children?

…When we rise and find

we are but skeletons of men, we learn

new tongues, new sounds, new groans of wretchedness

we couldn’t think were languages till then.

They’ll scorn translation for the ‘blessed,’ who’ll watch

their sons grow tall—who’ll hear them call from fields

while threshing wheat and welcome you in arms…

They are instead the languages of men

who haggle with the night. Of fathers forced

to see their youngest child—my son as he lay there, screaming

…see, he was reaching out his arms for me

And there were such But, he was crying, baba! And so I bent down and I grabbed his broken hands—but what could… I clutched him, and I was praying—see—prayer, stung my cheeks—like this—and just as desperate, I heard a faraway voice rasp distantly begging please God please

…

“More words for air.

(Why did I think they’d work?)

I tell you: I’ve tried peace with them before.

They do not serve you. Stop militiamen

who raid your land—then force you watch them rape

your daughter, man

by man

by man,

…demanding

that you you too that I

…or else they’d do the same to all my girls.

SPEAK TO ME, LORD!

Why don’t you hurl your words

as liberally as thunderbolts? So dumb?

Could One who broke the silence of the Deep

to speak Creation lose his tongue? No! NO!

And yet you show your splendor in the storms

and cataracts that break the world!—that sweep

the village off and crumple cities up

in jaws of whirlpool. Why is man big then?

Why do you suffer then to visit him?

to end your fast of words by banqueting

on savagery? to break your quiet lull

with screams? to wake from some eternal sleep,

only to make a nightmare out of us!?

…heh…

“Our so-pious friends had words enough—

proverbs and high theologies of thought

assuring Heaven’s innocent! ‘Free Will’

(they say) explains the child-soldier, the ship

of slaves, a daughter’s rape: that man is free,

and with his freedom damns himself to pain

and rich infinitudes of tears through acts

God hates—yet worth true worship’s Liberty…

I am no wise philosopher, but this—

is this a God for worship, were we free?

For he’s not bound! yet look what ‘free’ He made!

A Free Will he created with a sting!

and if ‘Omnipotent’ could he not give us

a freedom with no pain?

Speeches and speeches…

Enough. They end today. Our cause is just

to bring Him down! for, having seen his fires

shoot from the sky, I do not doubt his arm,

I doubt his heart. This war was never ours

to start, but waged by him on us from birth!

Why prattle then as though we didn’t see?

War is theodicy! and I—my dust

ground thin by Heaven’s pestle—insides mined

by Heaven’s eagles—stand so hollowed out

I scoff at fighting’s further furrowings,

rising by wounds more empty than the air!

There are no words inside me yet, save those

to curse him to his face and die

—though die

in arms! And with my dying breath I’ll drag

You down, cruel King: to kiss the blood from these

bare feet, and teach You now

what suffering is!”

With that, the refugee raised up his staff

and dashed it to the ground—then left the stage

to murmurs, shouts, and ocean-swell applause

that nodded in assent from suffering

and pled for war.

But silence once again

fell on the underground assemblymen

when up the steps a tall dark figure strode,

his frockcoat billowing obsidian.

His ornamental cane, in clockwork beats,

tapped echoes through the hall, as sharp eyes viewed

like sentries through his oval lenses all

the would-be Deicides, assassins: man’s

avengers, standing rapt to hear him speak—

that magister, the scholar: conjurer

of over-knowledge, there, John Faustus cleared

his throat and smiled…

then spoke, mellifluous:

“Ladies and Gentlemen… Distinguished Minds…

it may be bold, but I believe that I

can play the prophet for our prophet Job,

and offer answers why no answers come

from God:

THERE IS NO GOD TO OFFER THEM!

Haha! Short work for that old, knotty riddle!

But have it on authority of years:

I watched Dear God dissolve before my eyes,

and gazed too high through Heaven

till I broke

its clouds…

“Oh, I was once a holy fool,

precocious for the mystic’s mind, and grew

from zealotry at boyhood scriptures thirst

for spiritual realities. I’d haunt

the sacristies in smoke, or linger long

on lines like, ‘Verbum caro factum est,’

or else, ‘In ipso enim vivimus,

et movemur, et sumus.’ Even now,

so many years…I still recall that thrill,

which Easter bells ignited when they tolled

sweet Resurrection! Every prayer was lust

and satisfaction! longing, and relief!

and all the ecstasies of reverie

that hating life could purchase: praying, fasting,

or wringing-hands-and-sighing—all made sweet

my contemplation of Elysium:

reward—for dying!

Cloistered deep in dark,

and lost in thralldom to my codices,

my quest for Heaven called me upward—up

from the ‘vile Earth’ to transcendental Forms

beyond these ‘shadows’ of the lower world…

My books played pentagram, from which I’d draw

old sages like a necromancer. Up,

John of the Cross! Augustine! Desert Fathers!

These corpses Witch-of-Endored from the page,

I’d swoon in Love’s austerest visions—up,

still upward tending!

“But… one devil plagued:

my side-thorn devil, doubt, who’d scrape ascent

with skeptic claws and down my chariots

of fire.

Where stood Elysium? it asked,

Of what stuff was it made? and How composed?

How could one know that it was really true…?

With such a Mephistopheles inside

I couldn’t vault into the higher Realms!

but, melting Icarus to cynic’s seas,

fell Aristotleward from Plato: back

to Plato’s cave.

Such ecstasies! all lost…

until transcendence had some certitude

to bolster it. And so I looked to Earth

(my falling-place) to abstract Overworlds

its shadows might still ladder towards:

Deduce

the Law from life’s contingencies and I

might meet the Legislator! Chemical

Creator! Force of forces! Underprop

the universe and I might know Him yet!

a deep Intelligence and Providence:

Intention-woven cosmos! So I felt

re-winged, and rose by delving deeper: Earth’s

small molecules, and Newton,

Maxwell,

Boyle!

I summoned each, and waxed my mind with physics!

probing the circle-motions of the spheres,

and chemical consistencies; the churn

of potions in my beakers, fire and air,

vast rooms of burning elements, and smoke,

vis viva—all the essences of Being!

“…And yet

when smoke had cleared,

I looked and saw

no Purpose in the workings…

just

the laws.

Cold laws, but not my Lover reappeared

within the faceless fabric of the cosmos.

Though in each instrument and vacuum, plate,

or chart or dish there was my devil, doubt,

who whispered, laughing, This is it, dear Faustus!

Dear Faustus…

this is it.

That’s how, at last,

I realized…

—And yet still! I’d not give in!

Begging my Crucified, I screamed, ‘My Christ!

Savior, my Savior! save your Faustus’ weak

and battered soul from doubt!’

“But in the hush

which followed my distress, I heard no ‘still,

small voice’

Just crows.

And then the distant bells

of Easter knolling out across the hill,

accompanied by maiden choirs who mulled

the Marys’ find:

We went into the tomb,

T’anoint and balm our Lord with care.

But lo! behold! The one we sought is gone!

Praise God! for we find Christ no longer here.

So sang Faith’s steepled villagers beyond—

of quiet crypts, and Gods absconded: hymns

of celebration for their missing Lord!

but resonating in my chambered heart

as empty as that tomb.

The devil wins.

And that’s that. And so I was downed to Earth—

whose only goal had ever been ascent

into the Paradise of Overworld…

But in a life so Resurrection-lorn—

sans Christ (Good Friday in perpetuo)—

at last sweet Easter dawned again: my own!

when I, so lately learning, looked to Earth

as Earth, and took its shadows for my Forms!

Ascetic rites and sober ritual

had faded with the Deity, and then

I too found ways (like pious villagers)

to celebrate an empty tomb:

“My doubt

and skeptic eye I summoned for a pact,

that if Eternity receive no more

let death take all

—but not ere such a life!

‘Come, shadows!’ I exclaimed. ‘Be all my imps

and ministering sprites!’ then, with my books,

called up Delights!—alchemical exploits

and strange devices:

Steam I made my slave!

forced power from ferocity and made

it do my bidding; caught the riverflow

to wheel my mills, and robbed the Earth of oil.

And then (thus potentate), I carved the globe

to will! massed people into Industry

and seized the waving radios! with steel

and coal slashed ‘Neptune’s’ face, and stole from ‘Jove’

his lightning! Amber in the city night!

and symphonies upon a turning-table!

engines to lift (that arms might more embrace!),

and laws—if Personless—obeying us:

Earth’s Universal Legislators!

See?

There is some substance in these shadows yet!

And if Delight inheres in chemicals

why live projecting Paradise? Haha!

Away with that old brimstone and despair!

Lay down your beads and fashion goods to laugh!

Get over Love and learn to flirt with life!

Steal off with Helens from their Spartan starkness

and bed them in your Iliums of light!

For ever since those Easter bells wept down

their bitter-sweet chorales to dirge my faith,

I’ve cursed all soul-enticing tricks and ploys—

gimmicks of glittering toys and fantasies

of Sacredness. And so I’ll curse, with you,

a God of Lies: who haunts from ‘High’ and plagues

‘vile Earth’ with fears of everlasting fire—

yet is no more than smoke himself! Who stands

a supernatural Boogieman—a stick

and Spirit scarecrow warding us away

from dangling Garden fruit! Such effigies

we burn to ash! Become iconoclasts

of idle icons: send the Phantoms down!

Now is the time to show in deed that Man

will not collapse at Thunder—(noise; no fire!)—

nor quake before our fates in fear—but charge

the very Gates of Heaven! burn them down!

and OWN OUR OWN EXISTENCE UTTERLY!

even at risk of anarchizing all

and hurtling to the void!”

At this, the room

erupted into revolutionary cheers

and shouts for war. And to this chest-swell song

and antheming, Faustus picked up his cane

of ebony and faced the End of Days—

then hurled it like a harpoon-spear! Sharp—twanging—

it stuck into the side of Judging Christ

above (small flecks of paint-chips fluttering down

like blood and water) when—the Doctor leaps!

and, sprinting to the screened transenna wall

splicing the room, climbs up its grates to gain

some view and vantage on the crowd. Like French

wild from salons, who’d storm the hungry streets

and climb some fresh-erected barricade

to rally radicals to cause, so Faust—

with one hand free to (middle-)finger all

the ceiling frescoes—swung about above

and marshaled Earth to arms: “We must ascend, then!

From here we pose no threat to Heaven! Figments

will haunt us—till we see them ended. Come!

Let’s siege the ‘Clouds’ that floor these walls of Heaven!

Attack endangered ‘Firmaments’ and break

all barriers! Unhinge the ‘Pearly Gate’

from off Cyclopean jambs—and let it drop!

But first we must ascend, and mount a stair

that scrapes the sun. Ascend—and build a Tower!”

No voice was silent now, but hoarsed itself

with screams and shrieks—to free them from Above.

And so, to heed Faust’s charge, the cheering mob

disperses through the Palace Vatican

to seek their ziggurat’s first building blocks

and raise it up.

For this they stripped from the walls

all paintings, frames, and tapestries; they felled

Bernini’s bronzes from the hall; they broke

the sculpted Caesars into stones and ground

all down with pestles to a mortar gum—

then baked the rest for bricks. Young artists laugh,

hauling the Pietà, then hack it up

for parts as, through such wreck and leveling,

a ruin grew: a rising spire of broken art

with crumbled statues as its clay.

Two men

stormed Belvedere Courtyard seeking more—

then slithered round the garden eyeing stone

to build their Stair. They found Loacoön

and set to work, casting their fraying ropes

round head and arms, and snaring both his sons

in coil. The struggler thus enmeshed, they heaved,

and pulled, and broke thick legs from pedestals

of marble slab to haul his blocks away—

then fed his children to the Moloch-Tower.

So is it built, and rises in the chapel:

Skywardly reaching, till it’s ceiling-flush—

comprised of more than twenty centuries

of Western civilization’s work: the steps

of this Great Staircase,

p

u

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n

i

l

a

r

i

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s

…But now,

at last

—(when only Michelangelo

stood barrier to their revolt)—

now Job

ascended with uncertain steps this gyre

of man’s creation…

Coming to the peak,

however, (just beneath the scene of Adam,)

he paused…

and stood in silence.

There, with hands

that trembled age’s dance, he slowly felt

the space between the fingers of his God

and forebear—that one inch a landscape which

divided him eternally from Touch…

…Aware now, looking up, the men below

grew quiet. For they watched the Sufferer

upon the Tower, hand on Man’s Creation:

tracing the emptiness which rifted him

and God with old, like-lifeless fingers…

Then,

he patted it with outspread palms

then slapped

and hit it harder. Balling hands to knots

and fists, he struck and beat it harder, seething.

Striking the paint now—

punching—

pounding both

till broken bits of paint and plaster fell

and fluttered down—God, gray, and ruined Adam:

down to the Chapel, Tower, and the ground.

Cracks lightning jagged out as blows beat in

a hole! He struck a c r a t e r where the space

had been, and, with a wail of human pain,

pummeled division with his bleeding fists

and made destruction from Creation scream.

Exhausted, he fell back, and, panting tears,

looked up at his attack with grief-blurred eyes

as silence dammed the Chapel hall…

But then

it broke!

and up the stairs the people stormed

to finish Job’s assault!

At Tower’s top,

they bashed the ceiling in with clubs and fists

and chunks of stone, so that they tore a hole

through what had been the roof and saw the stars

above.

“Guys! Guys!” said one, “Let’s add this too!

Let’s add the ceiling to the rest of it!”

And so they brought it down, and hurled its lumps

of shattered plaster onto growing heights—

so that it rose into the midnight black

above the blinking skyline-lights of Rome.

Consuming then the chapel’s walls, it grew

that much toward Heaven—which in turn occurred

to Faust: “Let all the Vatican be fuel

for this: Man’s Pegasus! to fly him up

as high as Mount Olympus’ peak, once fed

on mangers brimming Holy See!”

And so

they felled it all: the colonnades, the doors—

the obelisk and dome (and everything

which Michelangelo had done and made

before them). All was served as feast to their

ascent, as up they went to trouble the clouds

of Paradise

then do the same to Heaven.

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