A DANCE ABOUT THE OBVIOUS by Eric Rosenbloom copyright 2001 On tired feet, with aching knees, the hips Pull at clenched muscles, and the heart Rushes to keep up, struggles against the cage, Which sways to another rhythm than the wheeze Of choked lung and clogged artery, struggles To overcome the mocking beat — for who Defines all rhythm if not the heart — but here It is no longer master, music itself Is moving the blood, the heart can only let it flow, The cells recalling song that they were born to, Their very life behind each beat, each beat Behind the memory of life they were born to — Systomy dystomy, the knees bend, the hips sway, The feet leap against the pain, and the dance goes on. Recall the story of a monk, a man of God, Who suspected that prayer and ritualized work Served more to show him his own mind While outside the cloister, brutality and suffering, Starvation, disease, and wars went on, Storms of destruction from man and nature Mocked the ideas of justice and mercy and a wise god. Millions of souls each year, in ice and in drought, In war and in work, in age and in youth, Babies at play, men and women at love, Lords, ladies, peasants, fools, the fat and the starving, The strong and the weak, those within as much As those without the walls, millions each year To feed the flame of eternal sacrifice. What has it bought? Who is selling it? Is God’s mercy only in the cloister, a peace Bought with the blood of those without? Recall the story of the monk who took his God outside. He walked towards the northern seas, his feet Blistered then bleeding then crusted and hard as leather shoes, Through village and farm, chased from enclosed park, Sharing with nameless others the scrapings of some baron’s bowl, Wandering with these gray and tattered masses, More lonely here than in the purposed solitude behind him, Tramping ever onward into shorter days, Through barren hills of icy wind-swept rocks Where bony plants were crazy holding on and surely No man could thrive — he made his home, Here he cried, Let God’s mercy here be proved. He built no house, welcomed the elements To do what they would to his body. Soon He was wasted to bone on the meager scroungings Of bracken and berries and the merciless blasts Of ice and sun and wind, but year after year He went on, learning the long rhythms Of this remote earth, the sea birds Who visited each year, the seals at the shore, The course of the stars, their nightly circle On the sun’s unending path, The tiny flowers that every year Answered the sun’s enticing cry And spread their seed with a new hope. The monk became like one of the grasses, Shrinking through the years to a wisp of himself, Sustained he supposed by God but ever in pain, Year upon year: watching generations of seals Enter the world, live, and disappear, He longed for death and wondered At this mercy — living By the rhythms of a weed And not allowed to die. In his mind he started walking. After many days he came upon a path And turned west to follow it. After many days he saw a girl in a field And she came to help him to her home. He did not understand her words But he went with her, the strong hand Under his arm: she was almost carrying him. She kept talking, without a shadow Of the fear he remembered in country people — Whatever had changed, he now was glad, Happy to have met this confident girl, Entering her family’s own house. She laid a blanket over a bed of heather And brought him to lie down. Another blanket over his wasted body, And wondrous sleep was his. What messengers carry my thoughts and prayers To what intelligence, where — this paper, Do I write to stuff it in a wall unread, lost Even to myself — surely I was hoping You would read this, who else, where else But such ears and eyes for human words, Your tongue in answer, a tender caress. |