Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Rangitoto (5.00 pm)


[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Refrigerium

the damned have holidays – excursions … to this country
– C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce


Acc. to St. ThomasIt came to me
Aquinaslike a light
the smallest painin the centre of my vision

blanking outin Purgatory
allis greater than
but the peripheriesthe greatest on earth


Screamingwalking up Rangitoto
I buried my facestopping
in my teacher’s robeswinded

halfway upThe morning! The morning!
to read out versesI am caught by the morning
to the scoria& I am a ghost


it being relieveddown by the wharf
howeverwe waited
by the certitudefor the ferryman

to take usof salvation
to the asphodelsestablishing Holy Souls
the farther shores ofin deepest



[Portions of this text were sampled from C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945) 60-61; 117; & the entry on “Purgatory” from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1957) 1126].

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