The Word Is Life

[novapsyche]

I.
Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.
Ezekiel 2: 9-10

All of life is a sorrow.
Babe's first moment of being
is his first separation,
his first removal
from the breast of God.

All of life is a sorrow.
From birth, the immaterial
which lives within us
yearns for its spiritual mother.
This is the onset of desire,
a sincerity that truly leads to woe.

All of life is a sorrow;
we cannot help but hear its song.

II.
When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight,
for I bear your name,
O Lord God Almighty.
Jeremiah 15:16

Hearing is the one sense
that survives birth.
The ear thrives on sound;
the drums devour words whole,
edible audibles that edify
the entire mind.

Even silence stimulates.
The sensitive cilia
seek the silence
hidden in the whisper of life.

III.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
Psalm 19: 1-2

The inner ear
perceives the music of the spheres,
that glorious orchestra of light
that haunts the breadth of the sky.
Such immortal sound
serves to illumine:
it resounds
through the sanctuary of the soul.

And the soul responds
nightly, deigning with delight
to dance the imaginal promenade.
It presses itself
into the service of sound,
rendering itself as dream.

IV.
And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows--was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.
II Corinthians 12: 3-4

The Mystery
breathes
between wavelengths.
Press your ear
to the whole of God's mouth
to listen:

beyond the blusterous
zephyr, past the crack of fire,
there exists

the Prototype,
Dei Pronoia,
the eternal echo:
reverberating.

V.
All his [man's] life his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.
Ecclesiates 2: 23

The sun will no more be your light by day,
nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
Isaiah 60: 19-20

The distance to God
is the space of a synapse.
When finally this divine circuit
swallows itself, and surrenders
to the silken breath,
hearing only harmony,
traveling the unbroken thread of audition
inherent since the first
physical instant;

following this thread
through the half-light,
no longer longing
to live in-between,
no longer needing
to split the self,
forcing it to flicker
like fireflies, ghost
against the ground of being,
engaged nocturnally
with creation;

when finally
this breath blends
into the breath of the heavens
and this blood
becomes the blood of the crucified:

there the dreams dissipate,
crumbling like a corpse;

and the sense that survived
the trauma of birth
treads like a shepherd,
a pastoral escort into the restfulness
of non-being.