Phillip Medhurst

A Pilgrimage to Truth
Feb 11, 2016

Epiphany

 

In inky shadows sages scratched,

Got drunk on mythic wines.

Philosophies were sometimes hatched

From patterns in the signs.

 

Yet three, drawn on by astral light,

With minds as clear as day,

Traversed the sands to catch a sight

Of Truth in swaddled clay.

 

 

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Feb 11, 2016

Icon

 

Though man-proportioned, Christos shrinks

Into His mother’s robe:

Our God kenotic made.

 

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Feb 11, 2016

The Virginal Conception

 

Mary, maid and mother – both –

Conceives divinity.

(Fire, we’re told, does not consume

Her pure virginity).

 

You who tread on holy ground

Put on simplicity.

If He is to be born, God needs

All your complicity.

 

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Feb 11, 2016

Annunciation

 

As swift as eye-of-reason’s blink

Consent, in waiting, parted lips.

As quick as pulse could leap to beat

Of wing, her cry let fly to air

Where word met Word. Thunder unrolled –

Salvation’s sentence in pursuit

Of spirit’s lightning dart to soul

Pre-hushed. Her heart, inviolate still,

Now known, knew all. So All the valley

Filled, and pure Love’s river swelled,

Then brimmed to shed its tide on time.

 

 

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Feb 9, 2016

The Sacrifice

 

A sacrifice like Abel’s is required:

No shrieking root torn up,

Or apple plucked and dashed,

But some born thing, with sentience,

Whose face, bewildered by the knife

Will stare as life flows out.

 

That way our God is satisfied,

Reclaiming what he once bestowed,

Maybe, heartless, envying

This creature-kind who lived

And loved the crimson blood too much –

As though it were its own.

 

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Feb 9, 2016

The Scapegoat

 

Each head, bowed down with several cares

Is raised to watch the sacrifice

Proceed to where Jehovah waits

To host a feast that famishes.

This flock anticipates a goat

That stumbles on the precipice.

We cannot spare our sympathy.

With it bad karma vanishes.

 

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Feb 5, 2016

Mardi Gras

 

Fat first-fruits pledge what is to be:

A growing and a ripening sea.

His promise raises us from sleep

To cross, in forty days, the deep.

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Feb 5, 2016

Eden

 

Since Adam delved and Eva span

Man’s waywardness has spoiled God’s plan.

Disease and death here level all;

Our winding-sheet conceals a Fall.

Though God could make a bush to speak,

A dumb child tells us who is weak:

Though He made His dead Son to eat,

Yet feeding some would be a feat,

For they can neither dig nor spin,

And day by day their limbs grow thin.

Such is the consequence of sin.

 

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Feb 4, 2016

Fetherhoma, or, The Poet’s Cloak

This sark, so fierce, in a trice can shift

To down, cloud-white, that glides above

The sorry squats of thought-bound men.

The wrinkled coast and furrowed lea

Frown as I fare on the road of the swan,

And sing the spells of a soul outgone.

 

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Feb 4, 2016

On Reading Psalms and Holy Verses

Proverbs 1:31; 9:5 

If I could grasp at Truth at all,

In a fine feast of hymnody,

I’d eat my fill; but my own fall

Has made of it a parody.

Beyond my reach, it’s only ash

I savour now, from Dead Sea fruit.

My lot bewailed, my teeth I gnash,

As I grub up fell’s shrieking root:

My birthright sold, my mess it makes.

Sin’s fruitage taught what Adam knows:

With swine the prodigal partakes.

I’ll go, then – glean where Wisdom sows.

Sophia’s fare – her wind-doled meat –

Her manna won’t to poison turn.

With new-washed hands I’ll take, I’ll eat,

Refresh my soul, and lesson learn.

Spiced with sagacity Faith’s songs

Will whet anew my appetite:

Then grown upright and done with wrongs

I’ll taste a fresh and chaste delight.

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