Mortality-Natality

I’ll dive in.

“What’s in there?”

“The perpetual sleep
of a hundred fallen saints,
my dear boy,
my dear, foolish boy.”

All the same…

“We ascend towards the sun,
not back into the muck, mire,
murky space
where earth and water meet
and intermingle,
mother and father
to a bastard child…”

“You mean me?”

“Man is the bastard
to be overcome.”

“And what of woman?”

“Ex nihilo, my boy.”

The tohu wa-bohu writhes
under the agony
of having been forgotten,
swelling up as though ready
to meet the boy halfway – to

Mortality-Natality

embrace him in his

mother’s arms.

I am a child.

“Do not long to return
to the womb, my child.”

I must dive in.

In a burst of mortality,
recalling his body to himself,
the boy allows his limbs
to be interpreted
as historical, corporeal
entities.

I’ll dive in,
he says to himself.

In the background,
the clay pigeon priests
pontificate,
“Beyond Being,
the son and father
need neither wife
nor mother;
no corrupted body
with its desires
for food and sex…”

I’ll dive in.
I’m a child.
I’m a body.
I’ve a mother.
I’ve a perfectly good set
of arms and legs,
built for jumping.
Why should I forget them?

A bed is made;
a warmth warmer
than the summer sun
envelopes the muddy,
weedy, fishy sheets,
decorated with patterns
of foreign, underwater plants.

Yes,
I’ll dive in.
Yes.