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Of Human Flesh

2023; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 72; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chy.2023.a904912

2056-5666

John F. Deane,

Irish and British Studies

Of Human Flesh John F. Deane (bio) A sequence, in several voices, for Holy Week Gardens Enclosed (Wednesday) Time, again, to confess, but this time, notlusts of the flesh nor pride of life, but to cherishingthe embodied: like those dawdling dandelionsalong the roadside and their glowing in hazy sunshine,or how the old man stands, compassionatein the rushy field, lights a fag, and coughs, and gobs, and how the ewes are gathering to himlike schoolchildren, as he turns towards the gate,muttering each individual name, and they follow, trustful, towards the truck. If you crouch down hereclose to the ground, where ewes and lambs have beenseparated, you may see the delicate scarlet flowersof the pimpernel, and high on the enclosure wall,thriving on the dustiest pinch of dust, the littlestbride-white blossoms of the chickweed: A Sea of Troubles: The Nun's Story My shepherd is the Lord … I grow impatient for an outcome—thou wouldst not think how ill's all here—no matter; days we ingest half-truths when I distrust both word and gesture,when even the holiest cloistered sisterappears to hesitate against the altar. Prayer [End Page 111] wanes, now and in Ireland, and the houseis withering around me—though once I dreamedof a fine, exemplary death. Today I refused the Hours and stayed outside, past matins,lauds and prime, chanting snatchesof old airs to thrush and buttercup in sunlit torpor, 'til cries of the noondayschoolgirls roused me. Mine a petulantbetrayal, hinting—they said—dementia: Sins of the Fathers: The Nun's Story (Thursday) They taught me guilt, Adamchild, inheriting. I stuttered to the age of reason, dropped to my knees in big-boxdimness, whispering Father, for I have sinned: child-evasions,truancies, small filches. Today in the common-room, the TV showed a child of Yemen, notyet two, so much of suffering he has no lungs to scream, thedoctors cannot find a vein in that needle-thin body. I wept for him, of human flesh, who is all of the children, facepressed to the hard earth of Gethsemane; perhaps we, I pray, who have pleaded for him in his agony, are theangel who came to comfort him, leaving the merest brush of a kissacross his sweat-soaked brow: Nazareth House: the Upper Room Missionaries, long retired, they were in the day-room;sunshine lay amongst them, like grandmother's old cat; someone had gathered bluebells and late narcissiand stood them in a glass bowl by the microphone; apostles, sluggish with walkers or seated stifflyin straight-backed chairs or wheelchairs: Sister handed out a clutch of the old songs and they sang,patched and trembly voices weakly willing: Memories [End Page 112] are made of this, Lily of the Lamplight, The parting glass…And one, dribbling a little, head drooped over a soiled bib, who had been tall amongst them, giving everythingof himself, was whispering to the air, soft spittle-words. This patient, attendant mass of men, with their chartsof pains and their exotic ailments, have no quarrels with their lives. The day-room, sacred space, mead-hall,these old men, shrunken and wearied through, these chosen ones, are made whole, the way the heritagecrimson rose unfolds in Christ across cosmic mystery: Night into Morning: The Nun's Story Night lengthens out across Great Silence;I do not sleep;my quiet Lord demands immensities; I readfrom Revelations, John, the dream with the heavenly city showing crystal clear;there is comfort in the words, the vision,angels at the great gates, guarding.I watch the moon as it labours across the night, and know the determined growth of the earthas my body is diminishing.I will slide close to the point of utter loneliness,that emptiness, the Beloved unresponding. I, too, have grovelled, pleading; in these cloistersonce crowded with the presence of the absolute Creator,the Christ at night, now not a board creaks,original faith diminishing: The Evangelist, John (Friday) Golgotha: earth's loneliest outcrop, crag of violence.I see, under the yew trees, where the sequestered...