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The Holy Ghost and Morning Star

by

Neil Bridgens

{A Tribute to Dylan T}


Only if each and every lamb was slain on the august
fields forgotten and the summer rains have ended
will i hold you with empty arms
and shield you from the ploughman's scythe that sheathes
the corn with a roman's sword. The slaying of each lamb by
the chosen disciples minus one
and the fallen crucifix
would lie forever
on bloated galilee.

With the stoning of the herdsmen and cattle boys and
all who carried a crooked cross
we came to know rebellion and a future genocide
that day. Only a few of us knew the truth, the lame still
blind in their cradles. Sweat wales and the tales of
merry men carrying goblets and
squeezing the behinds
of lily pale ladies.

Should just one unslaughtened lamb have remained that
our days could be drenched like mosaics, headless
and guillotined. We watched from the apple garden and castles
hay-high as children made their virgin ways
across wooden porch
and trellis
to clutch the robe of the stranger.

The glory of the townspeople and dogs that barked
on windstall nights as fog rolled off the coast
castleborough bridge, off cliffs and high moon
till the tide would swallow the sacred fish. Never once
would a figure approach till all their
baskets lay full in an ancient town, on an ancient shore.

Too many dead and being born
that the bays and shallow dive of the seagulls went unnoticed.
So tired you look after fifty-three summers, dying
in a mute scream as the bell boy
hides with his stolen god.

..and then the cry erupted
like a volcano at first light and back to the holy ghost and morning star
with it's estuaries and walks
up sir john's hill.

All the while the ploughman with pitcher and noon
day sun saw not the three as read about
in the scriptures.

But one of a kind
with torn robe and crutch

on his way to fern hill.

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