CONSECRATION
- When by an edict of the sovereign powers
- the Poet enters this indifferent world,
- his mother, spurred to blasphemy by shame,
- clenches her fists and condols God:
- Why not have given me a brood of snakes
- rather than make me rear this laughing-stock?
- I curse the paltry pleasures of the night
- on which my womb conceived my punishment!
- Since I am chosen out of all my sex
- to bring this scandal to my bed and board,
- and since I cannot toss the stunted freak,
- as if he was a love-letter, into fire,
- at least I can transfer Your hate to him,
- the instrument of all Your Godly wickedness,
- and so torment this miserable tree
- that not one of its blighted buds will grow!'
- Choking on her enmity, and blind
- to operations of her eternal plan,
- she readies in a Gehenna of her own
- the torture-chamber of a mother's crimes.
- Yet under an Angel's unseen tutelage
- the outcast child, enchanted by the sun,
- will recognize in all he eats and drinks
- golden ambrosia and nectar of gods.
- With wind for playmate and with clouds for nurse,
- he sings the very stations of his cross -
- the Spirit who attends his pilgrimage
- weeps to see him happy as a bird.
- Those he longs to love give him wide berth,
- or, since he offers no resistance, vie
- to be the first to make him moan with pain,
- testing their violence, one after the next.
- Fouling the food that he is meant to taste,
- they spit in his wine, mix ashes in his bread,
- whatever he touches they declare unclean
- and claim they fear to walk where he has been.
- Meanwhile his wife, in public places, cries:
- Since he believes me worthy to adore,
- I'll deal in worship as old idols did
- and, like them, have myself touched up with gold;
- why not? I'll glut myself with frankincense
- and genuflections, gifts of meat and wine-
- we'll see if in so reverent a heart
- my smile usurps the honor of the gods!
- And when I weary of these impious tricks
- the time will come for a laying-on of hands:
- these frail and adamant hands, these harpies' nails
- will claw their way into his waiting breast;
- as if a sparrow trembled in my fist
- I'll tear his beating heart out of his flesh
- and toss it underfoot disdainfully
- to make a mouthful for my favorite pet!'
- To Heaven where he sees a splendid throne
- the oblivious Poet lifts his pious hands,
- and blindly flashes out his intellect
- not noticing the angry mob:
- Thanks be to God, Who gives us suffering
- as sacred remedy for all our sins,
- the best and purest essence which prepares
- the strong in spirit for divine delights!
- I know the Poet has a place apart
- among the holy legions' blessed ranks;
- You will invite him to the eternal feast
- of Dominations, Virtues, Thrones and Powers:
- I know that pain is the one nobility
- upon which Hell itself cannot encroach;
- that if I am to weave my mystic crown
- I must braid into it all time, all space. . .
- But even the lost gems of ancient Palmyra,
- metals sunk in the earth, pearls in the sea,
- set by Your hand, could not approximate
- the brightness of this perfect diadem!
- For it will be made of nothing but pure light
- drawn from the hallowed hearth of primal rays,
- of which our mortal eyes, for all their might,
- are only a mournful mirror, a darkened glass.'
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