Clocks of Dust, Poems in Holy Week, a secular sequence in religions's shadow; poems from Palm Sunday to Easter Day.

I have just published Clocks of Dust, Poems in Holy Week, a secular sequence in religion's shadow; poems from Palm Sunday to Easter Day.
          I want to share this as widely as possible so, this post comprises the entire contents of Clocks of Dust.
          These are the poems published here previously, but in this version they are edited and revised.
          I am not sure how the A5 booklet is going to translate to this site, but here goes.

Praetorius Books

Clocks of Dust

Poems in Holy Week

– a secular sequence in religion’s shadow; poems from Palm Sunday to Easter Day –

Yesterday was everyday, so will

tomorrow be, and all tomorrows

when anticipation’s bound to clocks

of dust . . .

vii.     Holy Saturday – Dead Hand

by

Stephen M Rees

Praetorius Books

Contents

Introduction......................................................................................... 6

Clocks of Dust

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

i.    Palm Sunday - A girl skips by........................................ 9

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

ii.    Monday – City................................................................... 11

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

iii.     Tuesday – Life................................................................. 13

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

iv.     Wednesday – Renewal............................................... 15

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

v.    Maundy Thursday – Premonition......................... 17

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

vi.     Good Friday – Rejection........................................... 18

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

vii.     Holy Saturday – Dead hand.................................. 20

Poems in Holy Week......................................................................

viii.     Easter Sunday – United.......................................... 22

Clocks of Dust was first published as Poems in Holy Week on http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es during March and April of 2015.

This revised, printed edition, April, 2015.

Graphics, Poems and Introduction © Stephen M Rees, 2015.

Introduction

I suspect that for most people Easter is merely a roaming vacation date with too many irritating Bank Holidays when things might be closed, rather than a celebration of the most important religious festival in the Christian church.

            Even though I am not so dependent on official holidays as I once was, it still came as something of a shock to discover, as I was sipping my post-swim cup of tea in my local leisure centre, that it was Palm Sunday.  The occasion had crept up on me, in spite of the fact that I knew the date of Easter.  I hadn’t put that date and the Sunday before it together to work out where I was in ecclesiastical terms.

            In some senses there is no reason that I should have known or even cared.  I am, after all, an atheist.  Though, as I always say when asked, I may be an atheist, but I am an Anglican Atheist.  And it was the residual pull of my previous faith that make me think about the fact that I had not given the advent of Holy Week a single thought.

            You might say that my liking of the Bible and my reading of The Book of Common Prayer is a combination of literary appreciation and sheer Romanticism, but I do think it is something deeper.

            As the following poems will, I think, point out, my relationship with religion and specifically Christianity is not as simple as an atheist observing something totally foreign.  I was a practising Anglican and churchgoer until my late twenties.  I may not believe, but I know what it is that I do not believe!

            Although I find Philosophy a difficult discipline, I do try and read about it (even if I rarely read the actual works by philosophers) and religion is an essential component in such a study – even if you are rejecting it!

            I used the memories of a past self, welcoming the contemplative nature of Holy Week, to encourage the present self to engage in a similar meditative approach.  I gave myself the discipline of producing a daily poem during the week as a sort of spiritual experiment.

            Reading through the poems, I see them as a sort of diary that has used the everyday and ordinary as a way of concentrating thought and directing memory through metaphor and analogy to some expression of my response to mortality.

            I suppose that some aspects of the final poem in the sequence are my attempts to find continuity from the Christian I was to the atheist that I now am.          

            Perhaps the penultimate line of the sequence, and the phrase, ‘struggle is the vital way’ is nearest to what I believe.  Intellectual engagement with the questions that religion and a rejection of it throw up is a constant seeking for whatever ‘truth’ might be. 

            That search is usually a life-long preoccupation, for which our allotted span is usually far too short!

            So space for another sequence next year, same time, same place!

Stephen M Rees

Castelldefels.  April, 2015.

           

 

Poems in Holy Week

i.          Palm Sunday - A girl skips by

At first I thought she held,

perhaps, a lollipop kebab;

a fairy wand; beribboned

like a playschool sceptre;

stick for fools to liven up

a masquerade. 

                        And then

I saw some other girls with

things much more Baroque,

and realised this was Palm

Sunday and constructions

complications of the simple

cross, made from a single frond,

that I pinned up (religiously)

each year above my bed. 

How things have changed that

such a day can creep

right up on me, un-sensed,

like ordinary time!

And now I wallow

in my lack of faith

and idly consider

how that affirmation of belief

(in one week’s time)

that, ‘Christ is risen!’

gets no four-word answer

from my mouth –

which is as empty

as the tomb will be.

Poems in Holy Week

ii.        Monday – City

                  the concentrated dust

I eat each day;

tablets I believe in

much more slavishly

than those of law;

my packages against

mortality and what’s

inevitable,

                        I find,

each day, my life acquires

new acronyms, significant

but I don’t know

exactly what they mean

            I go for tests that are

increasingly intrusive

and undignified

            just like today when

the city, in a hospital,

with papers and identity,

I’m shuffled off to wait

            and think,

I stare at chairs,

the sort that do not

fit in homes, but

are the stuff of

            public space,

The chairs are grey,

with lacquered metal arms

which curve with elegance

up, forward, slightly splayed.

Two curved, matt planes

for back and seat as if

carefully cut from

fragile shell of giant egg,

thin, delicate.  They take

light well, reflecting gleams

in unexpected, subtle ways.

They people emptiness

with waiting space and

give expectancy to absence.

I know I will be called,

things done,

decisions made,

no thoughts for chairs.

Poems in Holy Week

 

iii.       Tuesday – Life

Sometimes, just sometimes,

swimming’s simply joy:

the strokes are almost effortless;

the water parts to let you through

and closes carefully behind

as though accepting your

progress and welcoming

your presence as a guest.

Yet you’re confined. 

                                   

The floats mark out demesne

and the black line of tiles

shows the direction you

should take;

                        and indicates

when you should turn

to try another length.

I swim a metric mile

each day, as if it

signifies –

            while kids discard

imperatives and bounce

and splash, ignore the lines

and just get in the way.

My smartwatch measures

out my swim.  And tingles

in my hands tell me my

time is almost done and

that the effort’s made.

I swim my distance,

but I get out where

I got in.  And end the

journey, nowhere.

Poems in Holy Week

iv.       Wednesday – Renewal

We share a common need

to surface surfaces;

to be control;

to show we are in charge.

The concrete’s poured and cured;

what once was rough, unkempt

is now polished and plain.

The wind has no obstruction.

The shifting dust finds

purchase hard on

featureless, smooth slabs.

But look at edges,

look at joins where

imperfection, broken tiles,

a crumble, are enough to

garner dirt and make

a plot for grass to live in.

The grass that looks like

ragamuffin’s hair with roots

unruly, thrusting down

right past the toes.

The stuff that can’t

be drawn with easy grasp.

The stuff that thrives

in spite of every effort

to remake what’s there

with what we want –

that leaves us wanting

envoi

In irony that art dare not attempt,

the grass is gone

- within a day -

beneath flat plaster,

setting well in place.

But I have marked the spot,

and now will wait and

count the days before

futility returns.

Poems in Holy Week

v.         Maundy Thursday – Premonition

The difference of a day

is everything.  All things

the same, but now, today,

this day, is different.

I swim in my accustomed lane.

I am alone, I feel refreshed,

but my advance is a slow tear

through liquid’s pulpy mass.

Moisture’s fibres stick and cling

and each stroke is a sluggish one.

I fight resentment of the

prisoned pool and feel

a soft rejection where terms

float and sink are fickle things

in water’s glossary.

I swim my lengths.

But as I do, I think how easily

what now is my support

can close above my head.

Poems in Holy Week

vi.       Good Friday – Rejection

The knowing glances seem to say,

“To own a lack, is to admit to loss.”

It puts me on the back foot, straight away,

as I insist that I am not content

until I’ve stepped inside,

and sat a while, in church.

It’s just today. 

                        A sort of ritual

for me. 

            And I insist my lack

of faith is strong enough to let

the need, on this one day,

be satisfied without denying

what it is I think I do believe.

The church, which occupies

the central square of our small town

is windowless.  The bays are filled

with giant trompe l’oeil paintings

of the Life of Christ - but difficult

to see in sacred gloom.

The altar was well lit.

And stretched across its length:

a full sized, realistic, loincloth wearing

corpse, whose damaged head was resting

on a pillow fringed with dingy lace.

The stuff of nightmares! 

                                   

Not, I suppose, for those

whose sensibilities are dulled

by other bloody-horrors, chapel-caged.

But on an atheistic jaunt,

with only half-remembered Anglican

restraint to guide me through

the foreign country of a different faith,

I felt like an intruder on a savagery

I did not understand, and did not want

to visit, even once a year.

Poems in Holy Week

vii.      Holy Saturday – Dead hand

Significance is not the operative

word that comes to mind as

I observe what’s round about.

There is no sense of waiting

for the main event.

Today is bright. 

                       

                        My glasses compensate,

and give the through-lens light a

brittle unreality that I remember

from the past eclipse;

                                    where

day was almost like it was,

but nuanced differences confused

the birds. 

                        And gave an underlying

sense of end of time to add a

piquancy to friendly drinks

as we saluted that event.

Yesterday was everyday, so will

tomorrow be, and all tomorrows

when anticipation’s bound to clocks

of dust and crucial non-events impose

itineraries on modern times.

Poems in Holy Week

 

viii.     Easter Sunday – United

All Easter Days in memory

have sun to brighten that

short walk from porch to lych;

along graves bright with

dying blooms; returning affirmations

of belief with mild, polite, unease.

While now and here, I watch

the greening trees, earth-islanded

in sunken circles in the dry cement.

As football, basketball, petanque

play on; with tea and coffee, beer and Coke.

And no one wishes anyone a Happy Day. 

And I’ve not gone to church,

again, this year.

It’s not the birth –

though that was odd enough –

or precocity, or even

the odd miracle (peculiar

things turn out to be quite

ordinary with passing time)

it is the central ‘fact’

on which the church is built

(that he rose from the dead)

that loses me.

We know that those

who make no claims about

their lives, die everyday.

And some by drugs, AR,

electric shocks and luck

come back to life – but,

this is not the same.

And those apologists who

juggle plausibility to make

miraculous mundane,

do no real service to their creed.

Some things in life are hard to take

and struggle is the vital way:                      

for those with faith – and not.

Clocks of Dust, Poems in Holy Week – a secular sequence in religion’s shadow; poems from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, was written during Holy Week in 2015 by Stephen M Rees, whose previous work includes, Poems – off course and New Poems, 2014.

           

            Stephen is a self-professed atheist and he has stated that these poems are, “attempts to find continuity from the Christian I was to the atheist that I now am.”

            The result of his attempts is a series of poems that wear their theology lightly and concentrate on the observational and contemporary to make their points. 

            He uses his swimming, a visit to hospital for tests, grass growing through cracks in cement and even the quality of light through photochromatic lenses as part of the subject matter of his poetry.

            This is a sequence of poems to make you think, but not to intimidate, they welcome the reader as a fellow questioner.

Praetorius Books

Cover photo: SMR

Design: Praetorius books

Well, so much for the A5 format, and the front cover did not reproduce and neither did the logo, but most of the rest is there!