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| Medieval Illumination. |
An Easter poem. Christ symbolised by the Hare,
the Virgin Mary by the White Rabbit, and St. Joseph by the Stag.
Dark the winter long,
Begun when Adam fell;
The frosted globe shivered without a robe,
The naked shame bit blue by polar prince—
For Pluto held with chains, enslaved the lands:
Cold and brutal steel, slippery icy sin,
A sepulchre the cosmos,
The cosmos couldn’t grin.
The deer, the elk, their little fawns,
No foliage for the plate;
For dry the bones, not green but white,
Antarctic earth—the snowy fields made muddy
from the
diggings vain.
And pain and pain the sombre world,
The springtime lute and laugh forgotten now,
Its echoes stilled against the ice.
The howl of wolf and hoot of owl
And mixed with hade’s tanning stench,
Made blanket of the moose’s cowl.
So long that moonless night,
far gone
the light,
But O happy night
That won for us so great, so glorious a sight:
First bright the fullest moon appeared
Mirrored ‘neath in rabbit white—
spotless
like the snow—
She burrowed through the drifts and soil,
Making up a hearth on earth.
The Stag kept guard and couched beside,
A coal within his mouth he dropped inside.
The Rabbit laid an egg, a Hare crawled out;
Thirty days on emerged, hopping through the woods,
Snow gave way to green each step;
flowers
shooting up,
birds gathering ‘round.
Winter knocked, Boreas blown,
And angry Pluto groaned—his shackles shook,
for Hare
thumped upon his home.
So Hades, Mighty Og, barked order at Cerberus,
Hell’s ugly bear who prowled the frosted plains;
three-headed beast nicknamed Pride:
one head, lust of flesh, lust
of eyes, third, pride of life—
And calling to its pups its litter yelped,
fierce Bashanite
dogs,
Tearing through mountain pass, frightfully fast,
And set upon the Hare:
ravaged,
tore, ripped and mauled,
Slew, scarlet snow, north wind blew,
flew the
birds, dark returned,
Moon was covered over,
As Rabbit and the eagle placed lifeless Hare
Within the cold and damp, dark den.
Hades poured a glass, victory on his mind,
When drip, drip from ceiling top was felt in hellish
blaze.
For enkindled was the earth,
the cold den a warm hearth;
Until the snows of sin made melted by a warmly wind
flooded
Pluto’s realm—
leaving deepest pit,
But filling the void between.
The serpents, the scorpions, the lions stayed,
at home
therein,
But long-paddling oxen, buffalo and caribou
rose as water rose
‘til out of Hade’s spot.
Since all the while the second sight, justified the night;
Moon in place with sun beside,
the dawning light at last,
As down beneath in mirrored form the burrow closed did yawn—
down the soil and up the soil,
down and up, down and up;
Breathing as it were,
Then burst the leaping Hare victoriously from the earth—
His burial plot a place of birth—
Springing from the burrow,
Spring returned with sun yellow
that gleamed on His red coat.
The fierce dogs whimpered at the sight,
teeth
falling to the ground they died
And from their fangs new pups sprang
and tamed by Hare
they chased
away the bear
who slinking back lay dying in
its lair.
To and fro the Hare sped round, all across the globe,
breathing
fire as He went,
Awakening the nymphs, defrosted from their lent,
And so their rivers flowed, colours rose,
and helped Him find the eggs,
Incubating first, and then the first born rabbits He had sent.
For a myriad myriad eggs the White Rabbit laid
when Hare was torn and slain—
These all cracked at Hares warm breath
And hatched, still hatching,
Hare out
of sight
but traced in scent of rose.
O what strangeness—a flock of rabbits
hatching
from their eggs;
Multiplied they filled and fill the once sombre empty
earth,
And as Adam first named the first rabbit
in the
season in which he fell;
This Hare called Adam-Two named the rabbits too:
Peter Rabbit first,
Then the rest He called by name new,
Wrote down by Stag on white pebbles,
taken from spring’s
water
which
was once winter’s slough.
22nd April, 2019.
