BLESSED AS EARTH : Georgi Y. Johnson

BLESSED AS EARTH

I am the verdict of this enraging guilt,
a wilderness of curses, a torturous space
forsaken, far from holy, garden gates,
or worse –

We’re stained as barren shells,
unredeemed, as writhing, living hells:
the Big Event, the self contempt,
and (the lawmakers said)
even Eden needs walls
to keep her fed.

Purity I won’t be shamed,
nor dangle in fatal falls,
that fools decreed in vanity
to possess and wasten it all.

Hear! The self-pitying cry
of rapists above and below
suffering there and here,
as they pillage the sphere
divorcing forest and field
with the same, dying lie.

Come, Mother, let head rest
in your undulating meadow,
slipping beneath illusion,
out of the orphaned dread,
beyond, behind, ahead,
feeling the easy, no-wife pulse
of your breath breathing the stars,
with me, in me, no me,
no world, no nation, no border
just this leafy, watery, music of space,
undissected, unreflected, grace,

As in this sweet, earthy order-less order,
the old dynasty comes to pass
and we evaporate at last.

Georgi Y. Johnson