ANAMNESIS

1.

 

Traveller: stop a moment.

It is time to stop time, to step inside.

Come into this house of quiet

and let it take your mind. Can you ?

The hardest thing. To stop thinking.

So you can start really seeing

and enter the silent mind

that waits in the stillness, and your breathing.

 

Can you sit still ? Can you let

everything be around you?

Then you will find new eyes

and the rose in your heart will open.

Then you will know what is true

infinitely made for you, in each moment;

this dew drop, this day's pearl

this grit irritating deep in your being

where everything is reflected to you.

 

Traveller, who are you? Under your name

your occupation and your clothes

you are formless consciousness living in time

with a strange disposition to love.

Dear naked soul, come home.

2.

 

There is a beauty we live for

that never leaves us

however we may abandon it

in careless indifference

faithless, ignorant

 

and in the shield that encases our hearts

cynical, street-and-worldly wordy wise

 

But it breaks in: we long for it

in its eros of images—and it streams out

in that wailing saxaphone, in a violin

rising exquisitely pained...

 

and it is all there is

in your face, freed to itself

with its glow like gold

to bring us back to what we know

inside our skin

where the beauty within

echoes to its own

 

being the only true healing

 

here, and as far as the stars reach

into the other worlds.

3.

 

What is the gift of your life ?

 

Beyond naming, an utterance

in your throat's depth, your soul's

intention to live—

 

Can you recall it ?

You sit in meditation, surrounded by stars.

 

What are you living for ?

There is an answer so personal

so passionate, beyond all conceiving

in your innermost coding—

that your secret may die with you,

but not before you've had the chance

to witness its luminous traces.

 

And she, he is your answer

that other one nearest of all within

who shines in you like an icon, a sun.

 

What else is there ? The spiral climb

hearing your name called through the mist,

ever-stretched towards your blue potential

true self's surrender, that is the only way home.

4.

 

Do you remember what we did

in those desperate times

when we met?

 

I would scratch a small circle in the dust

and you would add another, overlapping

and in that simple ritual moment

heaven and earth were reconciled again.

 

It's a secret we seem to have forgotten:

one thing alone can never be the truth,

it takes two—it takes opposition—

but only when two are brought together

and blended, can there be resolution

at the unforeseen higher, holy place.

 

Sacred sex, and union between nations

tortured by being held apart

in the agony of fundamental righteousness.

While, as only God knows,

when I surrender to you, as you do to me

even a little, then true light returns—

born out if its shadow, glimmering, gold.

5.

 

Oneness can be ours.

Walking into a room full of strangers

what is it that divides us, when we can see

our secret purpose together is love

conspiring in and among us ?

 

When we come back to our natural ground.

Walking into a Maytime wood together

digging a firepit in virgin bracken

'The problem is not the earth', you say

'It is us'. And the birdsong agrees.

 

Playing music together

listening intently to each other's melody,

loosening our boxed edges...

 

And if we can learn to sing together

the way the Spirit of Fire made us

speak together all at once, and yet

each understanding each other's tongue—imagine

 

a circle where each of us sounds our note

one by one, high or low, all round its perimeter

then rising together in a single, harmonic shout of YES !

6.

 

Community, or its reverse

where the music is so loud

you can't hear yourself breathe

and we're all out of our heads

living in one fantasy or another—

(it doesn't matter what we're wearing).

 

There must be space for all of us

or we become obliterated

joined by no more than a thumping autoheartbeat

as it darkens outside, where the streets

freeze in danger, and gangs

re-enact their abusive history...

 

Tribes of No one. No focus, no sun

no transcendence until we begin

to live in fellowship where we are

where we have names and faces.

'Love thy neighbour', where it always begins

your commandment, our necessity now

 

if we want to be human and thrive

beyond the evil we know that clings like fate:

 

an endless crucifixion of self-hate.

7.

 

It's like a wave—a hundred faces

lying, stooping, standing or sitting

stretched from end to end of the canvas

all of us in the middle of an ordinary day

brooding, gazing, dreaming, grieving

 

that means we are together and alone

in the community we live in

that is village—which also means

we are beyond each other's choosing...

 

Can we believe that everyone we find

is meant to be a thread in our lives

part as we all are of each other ?

 

That there are no real strangers

only strangely familiar faces

repeated across time, witnessing

that we are closer to each other than we know ?

 

But only if we take care, great care

of each other as we may learn to of ourselves

like a second skin, but of one flesh beneath—

 

that is the truth we hardly dare recognize

mixing morality and offal; love, and raw exploding meat.

8.

 

So what do we listen to

the greater love or the the greater fear ?

 

How can we find

each other as we are ?

The enemy within

is also of our choosing.

 

He may even strike you with a smile,

or you imagine her eyes are cold.

 

Only the centre that cannot be breached

is the centre that can hold.

 

And that means holding it, too

so that the white circle of our sanctuary

is clear—where we can confuse

love with the realm of its living,

losing the ground of our union.

 

But still, when we return to it

we may find each other again

in an ever-deepening warmth beyond all reason

more than ready to forgive us.

 

Lord, help us to return to each other

into the only community there is—

transcending our separate skins.

9.

 

What does it really mean

to be free in your body ?

 

To stand authentically,

to move, only moved from within

to let the music be you.

 

It's like true love—discovered,

rising in bubbles of cells

like blood, electric

with their own purpose

from their all seeing sense...

in the darkness of transparent flesh.

 

For every gesture we make

to be from this within

is at last to stand on hallowed ground

 

in the fine gravity of all we can utter

in a language that transcends our origin

 

becoming the Word that was the beginning

when all we are was breathed into being;

 

only now, we may live to see it.

10.

 

Surely, this is the time

to remember the earth we love

however lost it might seem—

and ask ourselves what does it mean

to stand by it ?

 

All I am.

The sandy path always reaching upwards

through the sunlit dappled beeches...

pilgrims passing, as we dreamt them...

 

The grassy ridge edge opening, then higher

where St. Martha's stands above the pines

and the way stretches on into the misty beyond.

 

It was the journey, its romance and mystery

all that life could ever be—

and it was belonging, that could let me

walk anywhere and feel the land

as one story, in all its memory

grounding our deeper reality—

 

And to stand by that

for the best we can be

in spite of our insanity

 

is to obey that unanswerable command,

and walk in beauty.

11.

 

They, you, I, we

are killing God's creation

 

for one reason only

fear, masked as greed.

 

They long for painless immunity

heaven on earth

in their schizoid fortresses

without looking to see

the desert their money is farmed in.

 

No: I, you, we are blind

Give us eyes. Give us eyes in time.

 

Albatross, bonobo, corncockle, eidelweiss

lynx, monk seal, po'o-uli, Tuvalu...

 

and will they rise in a higher dimension

folded back into the Universal Mind

to be reborn again at the right time—

 

Can we afford to believe it ?

 

No, and yes: in what it means

to let the Dream of Life take us

always further on to where

the sun is really shining,

the moon is magic and bright

 

as we walk on the Summerland island

hearing the abbey bell ring.

12.

 

Floating in our

sea of hope

like a coracle going

round and round—

through the eye of the needle

the eye of the storm.

 

Ocean where dolphins cry

waterlight where water

is finally understood.

 

Mother of Life

turning into blood inside us

reflecting everything we think and feel

in its crystalline mirror that is

the Law of Life, encoded, plain.

 

To be kind, to be moveable

to blend, to be happiness itself

the mind re-united in the heart's sea !

 

In a thirsty world, it is all we need.

Share water. Share water.Share water.

Transform the desert outside and within,

the Waste Land praying for rain.

 

So simple. And, star-wise, water

stands against all the dark forces

that would misuse it. Wearing this stone smooth

with the patience of a liquid saint. For you.

13.

 

Pure womb of sound:

gold struck to its depth

resonant, echoing,

out of each hammered bowl;

and with a gentleness

that is beyond this world

yet as deeply scored within it...

 

dancing over the river of blood

like gnats in the evening light

the sweet gold water whispering

 

its wave-sounds rippling

tender as breath inside the body;

each lingering echo a remembering

soothing the ear to its song

it is always quickening...

 

and as the windchimes swing

outside in the sanctuary garden

through the London darkness

 

Sound

becoming Word

for what was Paradise

and is, in every living cell

when the peace of heaven

re-enters us at will—

 

And then, as now, all shall be well

all manner of things shall be themselves

in every language in the world.

14.

 

The circle makers have come.

Have no doubt

about the mysterious white lights

high vibrating sounds, swirling air,

and the amazement you feel or fear

at what you see, scrolling

across the pages of the open fields...

 

It is all intended.

From star-seed to Gaia

in the one star body we are

being part of

one forgotten language

of symbolic cosmic energy

re-awakening and aligning us.

 

Raise your eyes,

raise your dead perceptions

we are stardust in our robes of skin

on a journey of incarnation and return

and the hand they reach out for us

the continual hand, that defies all triviality

in a rage of beauty and clarity

is our future, if we want it

 

where we'll never stop creating

under the Ancient Sign

 

held by the deepest archetypes of life

among these hieroglyphics of the True Divine.

15.

 

A stricken deer by the side of the road:

police car in impotent attendance.

How long oh Lord, how long ?

Our hope, awakening to now—

our tragedy, this trance of disconnection.

 

Can we see a New Earth rising

with us or without us ?

 

Can we become like crystals when

we are porous fragile flesh ?

 

Only when the light in us can hold

being a place for us daily, can we have eyes

to see from the heart of it

at what has always been here

through our longest evolving journey

 

and now the leap is All of Us, anywhere

—one hologram, everywhere—

and with that supreme duty of care

we have made You accountable for

when it is ours alone, to companion it

as the friends you called us to be

growing up spiritually, facing beyond

and here on this visible edge

 

where we sit face to face

in our life and death

 

and where underneath everything

we can think of, or remember

(despite the grieving pain of your leaving)

 

is the nameless happiness that sustains us

that is breath to every song.

16.

 

'Do this', he said

'in memory of me'

All it is, and all it's been

 

to remember who you

really are within

that he gave his life for

and his name

 

that is our name too

from the stars: Christos

 

And gave it as no one had

with a love that had never been

which is still about to be

 

Do this in memory of me

 

All I am and all I have

is yours, that passionate surrender

for all lovers, for all time

and a bright inexplicable ghost

transubstantiating anywhere

 

that is our resurrection

still saying what is ours to say

and be, in all our centres: I am here.
  

 

Notes & Acknowledgements

 

The epigraph from Plotinus quoted by Kathleen Raine appears in her essay 'The Use of the Beautiful', p.166 of Defending Ancient Springs (OUP, 1967/Golgonooza Press, 1985).

 

1.: has been published in Resurgence magazine, March 2006.

 

2.: two instruments from the Underground at Green Park, travelling to St James' Church in early Feb. 2005 to begin work.

 

3.: The spiral climb is an image in the work of the alchemist-monk Valentinus, who evokes the soul being called home where there is no clear path.

 

4.: the allusion in the opening lines is to a practise of the early Christians who—during a time of persecution—used the mandorla (two overlapping circles) as a specific and secret form of greeting. Of course it is also close to the more recent mathematical idea of a Venn diagram where two opposites are blended creating a shaded area in between. See Robert A. Johnson's Owning Your own Shadow—understanding the dark side of the psyche (HarperSan Francisco, 1991).

 

5.: with thanks to Sir Richard Glyn at Gaunts House, his home near Wimborne, Dorset where a series of conversations about the state of the world have been held, hosted by him.

 

7.: written shortly after the July 7th bombing in London. The opening lines draw on a large painting of members of the community in Stroud, Gloucestershire; on permanent display in the Museum in Stratford Park.

 

8.: with special thanks to my partner Lara Fiedler, artist & dancer, trained with Gabrielle Roth—relating also to the genesis of 9. from one of her dance sessions in collaboration with me as 'Dancing Poetry' (August 2005, Gaunts House Summer Gathering).

 

10: St Martha's is on the pilgrim's way near Guildford, Surrey; the phrase 'walk in beauty' in Native American Indian.

 

11.: for the list of endangered species I am indebted to The Independent's supplement Disappearing World, October 18th, 2005. The 'Summerland island' is Iona, the end of an Interfaith pilgrimage I took part in (July 1990).

 

12.: refers to Masuru Emoto's The Hidden Messages in Water (Beyond Words, USA, 2004) and the amazing crystal images he portrays.

 

13.: refers to Tibetan sounding bowls, with my thanks to Genie Poretsky-Lee who played them at The Lotus Foundation near Swiss Cottage in London NW3 (www.lotusfoundation.org.uk)

 

14.: with thanks to Andy Thomas' Vital Signs—a complete guide to the crop circle mystery (SB Publications, 19 Grove Road, Seaford, E. Sussex, BN25 1TP).

 

15. see Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth (Michael Joseph/Penguin, 2005) which my questions also refer to.

 

16. my thanks to Fr. Tim Pike of The Parish of Holy Innocents,Hornsey, London N8: as he writes (16.2.06) 'The term anamnesis is very closely connected with the idea of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the celebration of Mass. The dynamic of anamnesis is not along the lines of casting the mind back. It is more to do with bringing something from the past into the present, making present' . So be it.