Poem: Blood

Blood 

The leaves on the trees are wet with blood

From the heart of the dying sun.

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Jesu, do you really know what it is like

To be created?

To be nothing?

How could you have done this to us?

How could you have created us, and left us alone

In this dark of which you made us

With only each other’s faces

To reflect the light from heaven

And make us be a little while?

In the end, we are thrown on the garbage dump

In Gehenna, where the worm does not die

Nor is the fire quenched:

Darkness devoured into light

And life

And feeling

It is better to be damned

Than not to exist

Than never to have existed.

But oh, what sorrow, whether in hell

Or in heaven

To be only darkness

Forever

Are you really inside of me?

No, I don’t care about that now:

Are you really with me?

Do I face you, exist to you,

And you to me?

Do I have a face?

I know that you have a face,

And that your Father is with you,

And that you face him for all eternity,

And for all eternity he is with you

And you with him.

How happy you must be!

To never be alone.

To be all light

With no darkness at all.

But Lord, do you really know

What it is like to be created?

Do you know what it is like to be darkness

As I am darkness?

To not exist

As I do not exist?

I was made in a factory in Singapore

And the blood in my veins

Is only plastic liquefied.

It is nonbeing, potency,

Darkness made into formlessness--

It is I, Lord.

You formed me into me, for a little while, but

I am fearful, always, because

I am only darkness

And there is nothing I cannot be.

I can be only nothing.

Oh Lord, when I see you face to face

Will I have a face?

Will I be something in the end?

Oh Jesus, do you know what it is like?

This was the dark secret

The only secret.

That I could not create myself

Or sustain myself

Or protect myself

Or prevent myself from becoming

Anything

I could not make myself something,

I could never have created

Or sustained

Anything I had or was,

Anyone by which I existed as a person

And not darkness only:

And I could not prevent them all being taken from me.

Oh Jesu, do you know what that is like?

Why did you create us

If it was only to leave us alone

As nothing, or anything;

No one?

It is not because I was something that I suffered as I did

Because I was a child, or a man, or a person,

It was because I was not enough of anything

Not enough of anyone

in the end

Were you with me?

Did you see my face?

And when you hung between earth and heaven

Were you still only something and someone?

Did you still only have a face?

When you entered the womb of the Virgin,

Becoming a single cell,

A created thing,

A man

Were you something then?

Were you really created, as I am created?

Were you really nothing, as I am nothing?

Oh Jesu, I do not understand

But I believe

That there is blood in your veins

As there is blood in mine

That even in the brightness of eternal light

As in the womb of the Virgin

And the tree of shame

You are nothing

As I am nothing

You are created

As I am created

And yet you have a face

And I will gaze on it forever. 

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The trees are painted with your blood

The whole creation raves in ecstasy

Because you have become one of us,

Because you have descended into our darkness,

And given us your blood to drink.

My blood is the formlessness of nonbeing,

Yours the life of everlasting love.

The sun is dying in the West,

And the trees bow in a mighty wind,

Waiting the coming of the sons of God.

The light has become darkness

For love of us!

Let the heavens bow down and weep!

Let the earth be shaken to its foundations!

There is blood in the veins of God

And it pours, thick and dark and formless

Down, through the leaves on the Tree,

Into our mouths and our hearts.

He faces us, faceless as we are faceless,

And his blood in us grants us an eternal face

With which to gaze upon his own.

He is nothing, and no one,

And so

We shall live forever.

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Because of this, my Lord,

Because of this, my Jesus,

Wherever I wander in the darkness of this life,

As nothing and no one, lost in formlessness,

The darkness of which I was made,

This darkness of myself

Still

I will love you face to face.