After Patmos

G. L. Ford

The Vision of the Last Judgement by William Blake (courtesy Wikicommons)

After Patmos

I, John, am the one who saw and heard all these things. — Rev. 22:8

1. Aftermath

But the sea resumed, the waves
unlocked and seethed, as ever,
toward my small and shrinking shore.
How is it my eyes remain?
I should be as blind as sand
or buried a foot beneath,
tasting the grains of exile.

A mouth I once called daylight
has shut upon me, and grinds,
from dark to dark, with pale teeth.
My eyes are not eyes, but scars:
I see waters, not Water;
fires burn, but die in burning;
clouds rise up, but fail, and fall.

In the waving of tall grass,
in the plummet of the hawk,
in the stars drifting dawnward,
I see dreams, or less than dreams.
This ring of mist is no sun,
its light glancing off the skin,
stopped at the surface, and lost.

I have tasted light, and light
has swallowed me, drunk me down,
just a gleaming in its swells.
Or have I been always dark?
Light cannot father darkness,
nor darkness give birth to light;
can light leave, and taste of ash?

I am estranged, abandoned,
left alone to pray or weep,
fleshly, mortal, unconsoled.
My heart has died in a dream.
And this stone cell at the shore
cannot hold the many rains
I would pull down to drown in.

A stone becomes a fissure;
trees sprout limbs of writhing flame;
rivers break their banks, and die:
new scars grow over the old,
and I must witness to scars
that deep below them runs blood,
blood, or water I called light,

which is buried from me now.
Or else I have been buried,
but lack such eyes as could see
my tomb’s great, encroaching walls:
a muttering, roiling sea;
a frail blank blue, drooping sky;
a grain of sand on my palm.

2. A Wound

His mouth was
a sword
	and
pierced
	my own.

I eat dust,
bread, but have
no tongue
to speak more.

I could say,
	He is
Word to our
	words,
penned in his
	Book;

but my heart
bears his signature,
which is
my heart,
unspeakable.

3. The Faithful

Only the eyeless are seen.
Only broken seeds give shoot.
Only emptied mouths are filled.

It has happened already.

Who will shoal on my torn lips,
come to hear the only name?
At my door, quick tongues go still.

4. The Sacrifice

The altar gleamed with its knife.

Swung from the angel’s white hand,
the censer gleamed with white fire;
and he cast the flames to earth.

But now I see no burning,
no cities quake like a sea
disgorging columns of smoke;

why do stones withhold the fire
they sucked like milk from the earth?
When will the sky clench its hand?

Stars do not fall, nor the knife.

Come evening, I watch the sea.
The village makes its small smoke,
but only I am burning.

Am I clay, sod, mere sad earth
to be scattered by the hand
that rises from, and is, fire?

Am I the offering’s smoke,
consumed but yet still burning,
unquenched by despair or sea?

I am nothing, or a knife.

5. The Living

I am
         alive,
for sorrow
does not so rest 
on the dead.  It

pierces them, eyes
and heart, genitals, tongue,
brain and bone.

Or it is
	 the leaf
that
brushes the fig
as it falls
	to rich
earth.

On my breast,
dark wings brood.

6. A Name

The sky has been mended.

The book is shut.

Time will end
before my name
is given me to hold in my hand,
a syllable glowing to be heard.

		I watch.  He will come.  

I await that feast.		Who can face it?

7. Vision

Day follows day, and the sun
keeps its rounds; year follows year,
and the birds who hatched in spring
fly off, hungry for kings’ flesh:
for this has been promised them,
as I have been promised bread
fashioned from his deathless grain.

There are mornings when I wake
engulfed in light, and cry out,
sure that he has come at last;
but I see from the window
that the clouds drift by empty;
and I blink to clear my eyes,
raise myself up from the floor.

I have fruit and wine, a roof
to keep off the wind and rain,
friends to keep watch over me.
My body begins to fail,
a vessel that could not hold
such potent wine as he bleeds,
which must shatter what it heals.

I, who would make of my flesh
a home where he could abide,
shift and dissolve like the sand.
What I shall be when he writes
his name upon my forehead,
is hidden; but I shall see
his light streaming from my skin.

He pitched his tent among ours,
but his city goes unbuilt.
Where are the hills to hold it,
where are the stones whose whiteness
would not crumble in his light?
Who can set the cornerstone
but the cornerstone himself?

If I must speak, I shall speak
of how time’s fruit must ripen
watered with innocents’ blood;
but I would wait in silence,
as all the world is silent
when heard beside those trumpets
that will herald his justice.

I take my stand at the shore
and know the sea is bitter,
but like my exile will end.
I, John, saw and heard such things
as clove me to rejoicing:
I taste the depths of my wounds
and find that his own bleed there.

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G. L. Ford lives and works in Victoria, Texas. He is the author of Sans, a book of poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). His writing has appeared in the St. Austin Review, Book and Film Globe, and The Federalist.

Poet’s Note

“After Patmos” is a poem from the point of view of St. John after the Revelation has passed through him, and after his Mother, Mary, to whom Jesus entrusted him on Calvary, has gone on to her throne in Heaven. It is of that eschatological frame of mind of the New Testament authors, who could not help but think that their Lord would return within their lifetimes to establish a New Heaven and a New Earth. As to its form: it is in seven sections, and each section in some way is based on the number seven; it is effectively a mirror, hinged on a mini-sestina. The form is syllabic, rather than metrical. Around 2002, I had found a bound dissertation on the streets of New York that argued that the Book of Revelation was structured around the number seven; I took that to heart, and wrote this poem. That dissertation was destroyed in an apartment fire in 2003, so I can’t cite the author, but the poem wouldn’t exist without it.

This poem first appeared in LVNG 15 in 2014

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