No Resurrection - Hyperomm

Friendship, when a friend meant a helping sword

Faithfulness, when power and life were its fruits, hatred, when the hated

Held steel at your throat or had killed your children, were more than metaphors

Life and the world were as bright as knives

But now, if I should recall my ruins

From the grass-roots and build my body again in the heavy grave

Twist myself naked up through the earth like a strong white worm

Tip the great stone, gulp the white air

And live once more after long ages

In the change of the world: I should find the old human affections hollowed

Should I need a friend?

No one will really stab me from behind

The people in the land of the living walk weaponless

Should I hate an enemy?

The evil-doers

Are pitiable now

Or to whom be faithful?

Of whom seek faith?

Who has eaten of the victor’s feast and shared the fugitive silence

Of beaten men on the mountain: suffer

Resurrection to join this midge-dance

Of gutted and multiplied echoes of life in the latter sun?

Dead man, be quiet

A fool of a merchant, who’d sell good earth

And grass again to make modern flesh

Poem by John Robinson Jeffers