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Our Lady and the Soul at the Door
Stat crux dum volvitur orbis:
I will sing In the whale’s belly.
‘Great mother of God
Sweeten my foul breath. I wait for a death.
Cradle me, Lady, on the day they carry
My body down the bush track to the road
To the rollers of the decorous van.
The leper’s stump, the thick voice of the drunk
Are knocking at Nazareth. I am a naked man.’
‘How can I let you in?
The time for talk has gone;
A mountain is the threshold stone.’
‘Mother, I come alone,
No books, no bread,
Are left in my swag.’
‘Why are your hands not clean?’
‘There was no soap in the whole damned town.’
‘God’s grace has need of man’s apology.’
‘Your face is my theology.’
‘Yes; but I gave you a jewel to bring.’
‘In the thick gorse of the gully
I lost your signet ring.’
‘Why should I listen then?’
‘On Skull Hill there was none,
No scapular, no sign,
Only the words, I THIRST,
When the blood of a convict burst
From the body of your son.’
‘You may come in.’
Is it like that? At least I know no better;
After a night of argument
Mythical, theological, political,
Somebody has the sense to get a boat
And row out towards the crayfish rocks
Where, diving deep, the downward swimmer
Finds fresh water rising up,
A mounded water breast, a fountain,
An invisible tree whose roots cannot be found;
As that wild nymph of water rises
So does the God in Man.
13/10/63
A Note
In this poem I imagine a conversation between the soul of a man who is at the point of death and the Blessed Virgin. It could happen in an instant before the Particular Judgment.
I wrote the poem to make plain to myself certain fears and tensions – which no doubt many other people have – about dying and one’s ultimate salvation. This poem was the end and crown of a long series of letter poems written to a friend in Otago.
The actuality of death is different from the idea of death; just as the actuality of God is different from the idea of God. This man (myself or anyone) is very destitute. He has come to death without the Sacraments and with sins to repent of.
The poem begins in that state of darkness which resembles the situation of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale: a time when the sense of God’s love, perhaps even the idea of God, are taken from the soul, a time of waiting without light. It is natural that one should speak to Our Lady at such a time.
The man is knocking on the door at Nazareth, like a leprous beggar or a homeless drunk. I see the Church itself as an extension of the Holy Family. Thus the door of the house at Nazareth is the door into Heaven.
Our Lady answers the door, as a housewife will. She points out that thepage 658 time is past for exchange of words. The mountain of Purgatory is the doorstep of Heaven.
The man pleads his absolute solitude and destitution, his loss of the support of all creatures, material and intellectual. She comes straight to the point – ‘Why are your hands not clean?’ For he is dying in his sins. He replies that the ‘soap’ of the Sacraments was not available. She reminds him that contrition is necessary to obtain grace; and he replies with my own private credo – ‘Your face is my theology’ – meaning that he places absolute trust in her, that all other acts of the soul are swallowed up in this dependent love, as when a small child gazes on the face of its mother.
She speaks then of a ‘jewel’, which could be Sanctifying Grace, and which is also a ‘signet ring’ – implying the mark on the soul of a special pact with her – that of a Slave of Mary, let us say. He replies that he has lost it in ‘the thick gorse of the gully’ – in the wilderness through which he has travelled.
She speaks what seem to be words of rejection; yet he remains at the door. He pleads then his identification with the dying Christ – a ‘convict’, having ‘become sin’ for the sake of those who sin.
She then receives him.
The poem concludes with an image of the welling up of the life of God in the human soul.
UBI MARIA IBI ECCLESIA;
UBI CHARITAS IBI DEUS.
(Where Mary is there is the Church: where love is there is God.)
1963 (308)