Resurrection

I am already a dead man: I have broken faith
With the life entrusted to my treasuring, and
Not once, but again and again, as if at every
Choice I had, and this life, so disrespected,
Held out the promise, indeed certainty,
Of the knowledge, the experience, of what
Is true: meaning a security beyond myself.

I had this offered and let it go. Why was I not
Equal to the gift? What failure, what division,
Is it that exists in and determines me? Cowardice?
Yes, maybe, in how I chose my own resources –
Meagre, misleading, as they are – over trust,
Acceptance, embrace, of a greater goodness:
Yes, cowardice, shown in its opposite, in pride.

I see now that I set my pride – my cowardice –
Against the generosity of being, which is
The plain fact of life in its fecundity, renewal:
A generosity not infinitely or individually
Of humanity, but neither of indifference.
And I have come to understand that being
Is what is generous. And I have not been this.

I have loved (in my desire for love) a few, but
For what they are, for what they have meant,
To me – again my pride. I see that I allowed
My cowardice – my coin’s other side – to prevent
My loving, not who or what they are, but
That they are: and this is to love beyond desire,
Beyond the few: the love shown us in being.

For love, I have learned, is a choice, a use of
What is living energy – this that is lent for life:
And it is not the emotion that comes, perhaps,
In the course of time, and settles to depart, but is
Our willing participation in the whole, in time
And out of it; our willing embrace of being:
Our own and that of all given with us into life.

I have learned this through loving, and being
Loved by, one who knew all this as if by heart,
Without effort or inquiry; and I have learned,
Through this, that despite all instinct, science,
Persuasion, that we do not live unless we die,
And that to die – as I have done – is to join with
One who would not, and will not, remain dead.

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