No saint had ever prayed upon that land, Nor even faerie frollicked underneath Its red clay filled with iron which they loathe; Nor had the sanctifying breath Of poets clad the sere mundane In glyphed eternities. Or so I thought; and so I felt. Hot-burning manzanita and the smoke Of large incessant fires; the drought Which made good serious atheists Perform rain-dances; rock Black, porous, strewn Through all the ranches where it fell Out of a sky made crimson by the fire Which came from parturition of the mount Not so far distant from our house. None would have guessed Sophia was divine Whose tutor was that harsh topography; Nor had a Keats on such unsupple worlds Been learned to what he was; our bird Was not the nightingale but the vulture; huge Grim eater of the dead, a shaman – wise But horrible and nothing like a dream. And it was death I knew ere life; He brought himself to me in all of this; The hot cracked skulls of cattle, dung Left almost fossil by the unabating heat. I killed a rattlesnake at three years old And learned that I would die like he had done; So early did I learn philosophy. Only the stars seemed things untouched; And queen of them, the moon; thank God I had but little pagan learning for I would Have worshiped these if I had known the means. What my small supplicating soul Desired from them silently I can but guess; But even now I can hear water in the stars, And taste the coolness of a moonbeam in my mouth. The country was a man with leather skin And shale at his joints; eyes of obsidian, And diamondback the rest; the poison oak Unctuous, did make his sparse habiliments. Thus did I never see the beauty which invites One like a courtesan into a sherbet world, Nor does more chastely like a proud young wife Compel you in to warm up from the snow; No, this was Hector torn upon the ground By godlike animal; a threatening cruel chief With feathered tomahawk, and you soft-bellied doe. The way they do things in the west Is simple; and the faster gun Decides the will of God. A bowie knife Is in the fist of all the angels set to guard A California boy, and they’ve got rope For catching us if we break from the herd. God is more terrible than death; Faster, more cunning than the snake. He bit my ankle and he poisoned me When I had stepped upon him unawares; He set his coyotes on my trail, And gave the cougars of my scent. I’d see the boughs abending as they stalked Through verdurous black canopies Athwart my brambled walk; I’d hear Of evenings as I readied for my sleep The ghostly yelps of the blonde dogs He’d made to persecute the quiet black. And then He showed me what He was; Leviathan his plaything and the world Like a rough stallion he’d broke. He’d dress us all in snakeskin at the end, Our bodies cool as moonbeams or the lakes Of sweet blue fire that we call stars. I had to get the Bethel-wound and limp; Use granite for my pillow and receive His clemency just when the jagged knife Was subsequent kid Issac’s throat to rip. His angels are great hunters and the bores Of all their rifles sing the Milky Way. Later I knew that I’d been born In that same house of mercy where the man Named for the Seraph and the Rose Had been so plucked as after roses’ kind To be the nearer fragrance to his lord. So I was wrong; a saint had prayed; And I had never been alone.
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I don't know who Father Seraphim Rose is--I gather from the text he is a religious figure of some note in your part of California? Considering my ignorance, I am sure there is much I am missing in my reading of this majestic poem. What strikes me is the masculine vigor of the language, its almost hermetic strength. Read blindly, not knowing anything about the author, I could say with absolute confidence it was composed by a man. Less confidently, I would guess it was the work of someone of the Orthodox faith, rather than a Catholic (and certainly no Protestant). It has the militant, aggressive tone of some of Robert Lowell's religious works, too. In any event, I am glad to have come across it.
This was incredible! The reference to Keats and the word "verdurous" against this harsh desert background gave me the chills. I will have to give it another read (a few more!) I just looked at Father Seraphim Rose' wiki page-- really intriguing. Thanks for sharing this.