One of the most moving poems to read and upon which to reflect is this poem composed by Denise Levertov, whose poetry is so wonderful, she has surpassed my love of William Butler Yeats. This poem is her reflection on Chapter 20 from Julian of Norwich’s vision of Jesus. It is powerful, so very powerful, and moving.
On a theme from Julian’s Chapter XX
Six hours outstretched in the sun, yes,
hot wood, the nails, blood trickling
into the eyes, yes –
but the thieves on their neighbor crosses
survived till after the soldiers
had come to fracture their legs, or longer.
Why single out this agony? What’s
a mere six hours?
Torture then, torture now,
the same, the pain’s the same,
immemorial branding iron,
electric prod.
Hasn’t a child
dazed in the hospital ward they reserve
for the most abused, known worse?
This air we’re breathing,
these very clouds, ephemeral billows
languid upon the sky’s
moody ocean, we share
with women and men who’ve held out
days and weeks on the rack –
and in the ancient dust of the world
what particles
of the long tormented,
what ashes.(1)
But Julian’s lucid spirit leapt
to the difference:
perceived why no awe could measure
that brief day’s endless length,
why among all the tortured
One only is ‘King of Grief’.
The onening, she saw, the onening
with the Godhead opened Him utterly
to the pain of all minds, all bodies
– sands of the sea, of the desert –
from first beginning
to last day. The great wonder is
that the human cells of His flesh and bone
didn’t explode
when utmost Imagination rose
in that flood of knowledge. Unique
in agony, infinite strength, Incarnate,
empowered Him to endure
inside of history,
through those hours when He took Himself
the sum total of anguish and drank
even the lees of that cup:
within the mesh of the web, Himself
woven within it, yet seeing it,
seeing it whole, Every sorrow and desolation
He saw, and sorrowed in kinship.
(c) 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987 by Denise Levertov (New Horizon Books)
[1] ‘On a Theme from Julian’s Chapter XX.’ This is from the longer text of Julian of Norwich’s Showings ( or Revelations ). The quoted lines follow the Grace Warrack transcription ( 1901). Warrack uses the work ‘kinship’ in her title-heading for the chapter, though in the text itself she says ‘kindness,’ thus – as in her Glossary – reminding one of the roots common to both words.
