Loves

Magdalen’s Epistle

Of Love’s discrete occasions, we

observe sufficient catalogue,

a likely-sounding lexicon

pronounced so as to implicate

a wealth of difference, where reclines

instead a common element,

itself quite like those elements

partaken at the table served

by Jesus on the night he was

betrayed—like those in that the bread

was breakable, the wine was red

and wet, and met the tongue with bright,

intoxicating sweetness, quite

like ... wine. None of what I write arrives

to compromise that sacrament,

the mystery of spirit graved

in what is commonplace and plain—

the broken, brittle crust, the cup.

Quite otherwise, I choose instead

to bear again the news that each,

each was still itself, substantial

in the simplest sense. By now, you

will have learned of Magdalen, a name

recalled for having won a touch

of favor from the one we call

the son of man, and what you’ve heard

is true enough. I met him first

as, mute, he scribbled in the dust

to shame some village hypocrites

toward leaving me unbloodied,

if ill-disposed to taking up

again a prior circumstance.

I met him in the house of one

who was a Pharisee and not

prepared to suffer quietly

my handling of the master’s feet.

Much later, in the garden when,

having died and risen, he spoke

as to a maid and asked me why

I wept. When, at any meeting

with the Christ, was I not weeping?

For what? I only speculate

—brief inability to speak,

a weak and giddy troubling near

the throat, a wash of gratitude.

And early on, I think, some slight

abiding sense of shame, a sop

I have inferred more recently

to do without. Lush poverty!

I think that this is what I’m called

to say, this mild exhortation

that one should still abide all love’s

embarrassments, and so resist

the new temptation—dangerous,

inexpedient mask—of shame.

And, well, perhaps one other thing:

I have received some little bit

about the glib divisions which

so lately have occurred to you

as right, as necessary, fit

That the body is something less

than honorable, say, in its

... appetites? That the spirit is

something pure, and—if all goes well—

potentially unencumbered

by the body’s bawdy tastes.

This disposition, then, has led

to a banal and pious lack

of charity, and, worse, has led

more than a few to attempt some

soul-preserving severance—harsh

mortifications, manglings, all

manner of ritual excision

lately undertaken to prevent

the body’s claim upon the heart,

or mind, or (blasphemy!) spirit—

whatever name you fix upon

the supposéd bodiless.

I fear that you presume—dissecting

the person unto something less

complex. I think that you forget

you are not Greek. I think that you

forget the very issue which

induced the Christ to take on flesh.

All loves are bodily, require

that the lips part, and press their trace

of secrecy upon the one

beloved—the one, or many, endless

array whose aspects turn to face

the one who calls, the one whose choice

it was one day to lift my own

bruised body from the dust, where, it seems

to me, I must have met my death,

thereafter, this subsequent life

and late disinclination toward

simple reductions in the name

of Jesus, whose image I work

daily to retain. I have kissed

his feet. I have looked long

into the trouble of his face,

and met, in that intersection,

the sacred place—where body

and spirit both abide, both yield,

in mutual obsession. Yes,

if you’ll recall your Hebrew word.

just long enough to glimpse in its

dense figure power to produce

you’ll see as well the damage Greek

has wrought upon your tongue, stolen

from your sense of what is holy,

wholly good, fully animal—

the body which he now prepares.

Source: Recovered Body (George Braziller Inc., 1998)