London, June 2017
I looked up and saw you, your distorted body
writhing again in agony. There is a season, the Big Book says,
a time to die, a time to weep, and a time for peace;
no one, it says, can understand what is happening under the sun;
I saw the bare breast heaving, that once beautiful breast;
I hurt for you, for your beloved once beautiful, body, each twist or twitch,
each reach and wrench adds to the fire in your flesh
and bones; I plead to creator lover God for you, to ease your pain,
to mother you. I wince once more at the bitter-spittle angers
of humankind: the blunted iron nails driven through your caring hands,
your tender feet; so that impossible you hang from them,
and stand on them; the muscles cramp and spasm, and your face,
so beautiful once, is contorted with sweat and ugliness, with
blood and sweat and tears. Today, my Christ, June 14, twenty-seventeen,
Grenfell Tower in London was engulfed in flames; inestimable
furnace, suffering unbearable. A child appears for a moment, at a window
of the sixteenth floor, a moment only, frantic, waving:
to a not-there-saviour; you? We hurt, my Christ, we hurt. Why is our spittle
hot with bitterness? Words, the Big Book says, can be
wearisome, a chasing after wind. And yet. . . the world breaks. The world
Re-forms. But the beautiful body breaks, and yields.
Yearning and grief trouble us. At the heart of it. You. Hurting.
John F. Deane
John F Deane’s recent books are the poetrry collection, “Semibreve” ( Carcanet ) and a memoir “Give Dust a Tongue” (Columba )
