Literature
Whisky Priest
M.A.R. Habib
Stumbling, small
Without wine
of revelation, with brandy, fumbling
in time's tiresome spaces
was it you
who was crucified?
Descended from the rock
Caught between rocky places
denying, flowing with fear of God's untaught
Face, descending on criminals
With unsought grace, were you
the thief
who was saved?
Who could live such wild contradiction
Eternity and time, spirit and
blood, stooping before the majesty of fiction
broken bleeding wrists hanging from wood
what good in the story did you?
Stealing meat from a dying dog, lying
like those condemned with you, and, yes
Mass and Communion at a price; and yet
you are the Church, the patriot's enemy,
indifferent to the poor, can you - you
be ready for the cross?
Hedda Gabler
M.A.R. Habib
And who will wait for you, high lady
Who will wait for you?
Rich in your high feather and black dress
And rich in your taste for death?
Will history wait for you
Whose life was gone before its birth?
For you whose mansions and portraits
Stare from a past which will not waken?
Who will love you, Hedda Gabler,
Amid your pianos and tables and revolvers;
Amid ancient ceremony, the frenzy of Dionysiac
Memory, a world of high courage, reverie and passion.
What man now can ever hold your hand?
And who will weep for you, high lady
When the dust has buried your world;
And whatever breathes in bourgeois life
Is stained with dullness, bereft of your beauty;
Your heroes are gone:
No vine-leaved head to kiss your red red mouth.
Freud’s Dora
M.A.R. Habib
The high-handed man, solicitous
Untamed your demons; what passion
Seethed within you to be kissed again,
To be insulted, and restored,
Adored.
But now – your maidenhead intact –
You have only dreams, and no decipherer;
Only dreams to tell what might have been;
What young man, waiting across the seas
Would sail to claim your hand.
How I shall weep for you, gone as you are
Into a lonely death, like millions,
Without love, without love, without love.
The Dead
M.A.R. Habib
For one moment, you lived
Lived in the knowledge of death.
As the snow falls through the universe,
One look, one form at the garden’s edge, one poor boy
Told you of life’s mystery, and was gone.
All that is left is already dead:
Routine, drudgery, husbands, parties, speeches:
Only music remains to voice
The true shape of memory, of the sorrow that is your soul.
Such love will not come to you again:
Its absence will fall
Through the depths of all being
Through all of your days.