I. The Magazine Jumps Out of Our Hand in Line, Forms Itself into a Mouth, and Speaks about The Meal and The Whisper
Carpaccio! Carpaccio!
Oh whereforart our 'Paccio?
I see the ghoul who's busy
painting yellowed death
upon deserted vistas.
skulls hide under outside kitchen tables
(mom heath broke the patio table again okay no he didn't it was me this time I was eating macaroni in the windstorm when it flipped which is why there's yellow on the siding)
skulls there crushed
the sounds they make
under the left rear tire
women receiving back their dead
shortly after He died, I guess, their dead
who still look dead,
who smell so dead,
whose skin has pulled grey-tight,
bunny gut,
desaturated noodles
who seem to have come to life,
three cross
in upper right from
hanging hanging hanging,
dead twigs,
dead figs,
dead Christ with wounds from
slicing slicing.
"There's death in the pot!"
an apple core from
chomping chomping
death in the corners,
death in the rivers,
death in obscure figures in the back,
the one obscured in black,
but who's that in the middle?
Who's that by the bark?
Who sits below the only blooming tree,
framed by blue waters
and a slightly-purplish mountain?
Who is this who sits below,
the only living color
in the frame that
from decay paints Christ?
His posture – now I know of his posture, I think –
his posture, have you painted this before
Carpaccio?
Is this one of your heroes,
dear Carpaccio?
Oh yes, there he is, now closer up,
with legs still cross,
The Thinker's posture,
sitting there before the blooming fields
beside a throned, lifeless, slumping Christ.
Is that our Job?
It's Job.
Job who knew a pain like none
of us living knew. Who lost
his kids, his fields,
who lost his servants, health, his
friendships. Why do bad things strike
good people?
asketh Elder Job, though deep down knows
none is good – and he, and he is bad –
deep down he knows.
In pain – he cries
to God – accuses – while accusing
-- says:
"I know that my redeemer lives."
That man, from the close-up of the two
before our throned Dead Christ,
now sits in the midst of other pigment
in the middle ground
with Christ on a slab
on Holbien's slab
with the dead around – and the dead
have walked – the earth
returned –
at the death of one,
but one is Job,
who says,
"I know that my redeemer lives."
He, who's been full doornail-dead,
for several thousand years,
sitting,
thinking,
below the only blooming tree,
before the rivers green,
beside the blue stream that dips immortals,
and the melting snow in back.
Job speaks of promises to keep,
and miles to go long after we sleep,
and miles to go long after we sleep.
His presence there, at the burial,
at the sepulcher,
before embalming
no disassemble
formaldehyde,
says so simply now:
God suffered more in our world,
than ever we could in his.
V. Letter to the Editor
"Methinks it holdeth
force enough to make one
find one's faith."
I. Zine
Job sits
and waits–
–a vigil–
III. Conversatio
he will not close his eyes
he will not close his eyes
and waiting isn't long compared
to four or five thousand lives
waits, he, three short
time, times, half a time...
II. The Meal Whispers
("I'll let everyone who overcomes eat from the tree of life. To everyone who overcomes, I'll give some of the hidden manna... the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne... through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.")
V. The Letter to the Editor Appears at the Front of the Magazine
'weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.'
III. Self-Disclosure Whispered at the Close of the Conversation at the End of the Line
for in my Christ all death has died,
for in my Christ my God did bleed,
for in our Christ God's ever dead
along with we who die,
says Paul,
as often as He rises.
Hear me:
I. The Magazine
Holbien fished a body from the Rhine
and heard it cough...
III. Conversion.
Evermore.
Holy Saturday
By T. A. Giltner