Ode to St. Michael

They believe nothing, these modern people, so I must tell them of the eternal truths which our church has revealed and will not stop revealing.

The devil exists, however much we would prefer that he didn’t, and to deny him or to ignore him allows him to grow that much stronger. And how do I know? Because I’ve met him.

I was fourteen at the time, and I, with my friend Georg Erdmann, had won a scholarship to study at the St. Michael’s School in Lüneburg. So we set off together to walk the 180 miles to our new school.

Yes, I said walk—since how else were we to get there? True, a passing farmer with his cart would take us to the end of his fields, or perhaps into the nearest burg, if it was market day, but mostly we walked. At night, we would sleep in the fields, or perhaps beg permission to sleep in a barn. And so the days passed pleasantly: we were young, we were excited, we were seeing the world for the first time, and it excited us.

Mostly, I think we were full of wonder. There are two children near me, of about the same age as I was then, and they are predictably playing video games. I glance at their faces, and they have the dulled look of an opium smoker. Nothing amazes them, not even the wondrous device that both stimulates and sedates them.

For me, every experience was new. I saw flowers growing by the road, and they were not plants but jewels. The stars at night shone only on us, and each one was a piece of God’s love that he had mounted just for us. Even the fatigue, at the end of a day, had a special divinity to it: we slept well no matter how rough the bed, if indeed there were a bed.

All was well until the day that Georg, who tended never to look where he was going, took a fall, and badly twisted his ankle. A farmhouse was quite near, and I helped him to its door.

I felt it as soon as I entered the house, and had Georg not needed a place to rest, I would never have stayed a minute in the place. For the sense of evil was palpable, from the moment we saw the sullen, suspicious face of the wife to the moment we said farewell to her drunken oaf of a husband. Because you could feel it—the menace in the air, the hatred, the fear and the lies. It was a house of pure evil.

“Ye both can stay, but you’ll have to earn your keep,” said Otto, the husband, and referring to me. I was willing, but what could I do? I could sing, I could play the violin and the harpsichord—but farm life I knew nothing of.

And so the next morning I was up at dawn, and began toiling: there were the slops to feed the pigs, there was the hay to be forked down to the cows, there was an endless succession of tasks large and small that kept me busy.

All this was good enough: I was young, I was healthy, I liked the feeling of work. What didn’t I like? The constant feeling of being watched.

Was it real? Was I imagining it? I know not, but it was nonetheless powerful, even if it were unreal. I felt Otto’s eyes on me at all times, and I would turn, only to find him looking at something else. But what accounted for that strange feeling that everyone knows so well of being observed?

Nor was it just when Otto was present that I felt under observation; even alone in the barn, in the fields, everywhere, I felt eyes watching me. I would whirl around, always to be confronted with nothing.

Soon, the feeling of being watched was supplemented by the sound of a low mutter, speaking a language I knew, but too softly to make out words. Was it just I, or did others hear it too? I asked Georg; he heard nothing.

I began to sleep badly, despite being tired from the work on the farm. And it was then that I could hear Otto, in the room next door, arguing with his wife. At first, it was impossible to understand what he was saying; later, it became impossible to ignore.

He was drunk at the time, but that was hardly the point. He accused his wife of having a roving eye, of desiring every man but him, and of having relations with anyone who would have her. Nor was that all; very soon the insults were followed by slaps, then punches, and then—most grisly of all—beatings against the wall.

The next day, the wife would appear with bruises and black eyes; she would limp with her eyes cast down about the house, doing the tasks of cleaning and cooking. The last was a particularly vexing point, since we were both fourteen, and the needle on the appetite meter tended to be stuck at “ravenous.” And so we were constantly told that we were eating them out of house and home, that we were a burden, that they didn’t know why they didn’t turn us out. Were we grateful for their generosity? We tried to be, but really, we could not.

Oddly, Georg was less offended by all this than was I. Because, through lack of sleep and the situation in general, I became irritable and snappish. Unexpected sounds rattled me, the barking of a dog at night gave me nightmares.

Then, the smell began.

Like everything else in that accursed place, it was there before I knew it. I did not so much start smelling it than I realized that I had been smelling it—and for some time. Nor was it a smell—it was more like an invading agent. No—that’s not quite it, either. It had the feeling of something that would permeate everywhere. It was the smell of an animal who had died, and whose unattended corpse was rotting in the hot summer sun.

As I grew more and more distracted, I grew more and more careless. I began dropping food; this would provoke long tirades and bitter accusations. And then, I noticed that Otto was now openly looking at mean, with slitted eyes that seemed to concentrate the hate and spite. Nor did he attempt to disguise his hate; he muttered profanities under his breath quite openly.

He grew more abusive to his wife, calling her a slut and a fallen woman and a whore quite openly in front of us, nor did he attempt to hide the fact that he was beating her.

It came to a head late one night of exceptional fury, when he was raging at his wife, calling her a filthy bitch and accusing her betraying him. I could stand it no more, and shouted from my bed for them to be quiet. Instead, he erupted with rage, and in a matter of seconds, it seemed, he was standing at the bedroom door, with his wife beside him. He was holding her on tiptoes by her hair.

“SO TAKE HIM, YOU CUNT, TAKE HIM IF YOU WANT IT SO MUCH!” he shouted, and then he shoved her toward me. I dodged and she fell. And that is when he started the most violent beating of all.

There was very little we could do. We were both 14, and one of us was still injured, though on the mend. And we were gentle youths—we had come from homes of good and sober people, where drunkenness and vice and low living were nowhere to be found. And so we stood in horror at the near murderous assault the wretch was delivering to his wife, when very easily we could have found an object and hit him over the head with it.

“Get out,” called the woman to us, “get out of the house.”

And that is when I met the devil, for Otto turned, then, and I saw the red eyes of hate, I saw the sulfurous flames darting round his head, and lastly…I smelled the horrible, offensive odor of hate and death that had tailed me all those days. Yes, I saw the devil, and the devil saw me, and there was no Otto there, and the devil knew that very well, and knew that I knew. He looked at me, he acknowledged me, and then…

…he spat at me.

We stumbled out of the house; I half carried Georg away from that house, and down the road that took us away, but that didn’t, since I learned this from the devil. Once met, a part of you will ever stay in the devil’s hands.  

  

(St. Michael's day was 29 September; Michael is revered as the guardian of the church, and the archangel who wrestled with the devil and won.)

A Psalm for the Paining

“You do realize the trouble you’re in, don’t you,” said Lady. “If this is to be anything like the Bible, you’ll have to have at least four gospels, all giving mostly similar accounts of the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, but with just enough jarring details to provide scholars for the next millennia to do exegesis.”

Damn, what’s exegesis? It’s one of those words I always look up, understand vaguely, and then forget. Sort of like “semiotics,” except that I never even understand that one…

“You know, scholarly interpretation of the text,” she went on to tell me. “Then you’ll have to have all the other books, and the Apocrypha. Oh, and guess what? You’re gonna have to produce a couple hundred psalms, unless, of course, you want to emulate King David, who according to one Dead Sea Scroll, wrote 3600 of them. So that’s one a day for almost ten years. Get going, buster!”

“I absolutely refuse to write psalms,” I told her. “And speaking of which, did you know they’re crapping up all the good ones? I can tell you because I listened to this absolutely great cantata the other day—BWV 131—and it’s based on Psalm 130. You know the one that starts, ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee.’ Well it’s a lovely old thing, but it has a little ticker in it, namely about fearing God. So I looked the new version, and it’s been scrubbed up, leaving it substantially dirtier. Now, instead of fearing God, it’s “so that we may serve you reverently. Is that nuts or what?”

“Well, I don’t fear God,” said Lady.

“Are you crazy? I’m utterly terrified of God, and I don’t even believe in Him. Imagine if I did? I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning!”

“Stop saying you don’t believe in God,” said Lady, “since you perfectly well do.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you couldn’t be the kind of person you are if you didn’t.”

Well, every discussion with Lady has many corners, most of which I back myself into.

“Look, you’re the poet, not I. Why don’t you write the damn psalms?”

“You gonna paint houses?”

“I could certainly paint houses!”

“Yes, but would anybody buy them?”

“Well, you didn’t ask me that….”

“Get down to work,” she told me, “and remember, you have to use the word ‘Selah,’ every once in a while.”

So I do:

Psalm 1

Unto the hills I sought you,

Treading on paths foreseen by ancients

Smelling the green of spring pounced

From the gray of winter. Selah.

On the banks of the rivers I searched for you,

As fish swam your glory and wind whistled your adoration.

I drank and was made more thirsty; my tongue

Clew to the roof of my mouth, and yet I praised you.

Athirst, I sought you in the deserts, and flung myself

To cool in the ardent sun,

Which shaded every live thing, but not I.

Not I, who seek you more each day,

As you elude me, leaving only a laugh in the air,

And a smirk on the path.

Yes, you dance with whores and drink with thieves,

But I, dear Lord? I, who stand before the table you just left,

Staring at the crumbs

You have forbidden me to eat?  

My God, and I have ten years of this stuff?

The Miracle of the Sightless Thief

The boy continues sad, listless. When will he realize: there is no cure for the pain of death other than work? For to dwell on sorrow is a very great sin, since from there how easily may enter the devil? But still Carl Phillip refuses to do his exercises, and his teacher at school tells me that he has failed in his most recent exams! Surely, if he continues on this path, he will fall into perdition.

“You must whip the child, Sebastian,” said Anna Berthe, the elder sister of my late wife, María Barbara, who came to live with us when we got married. She had no home then, she has no home now, and so she came to live with us. An excellent woman, who knows her Christian duties and does them without complaint. Though, as we learned all too soon, she can have strong views, and no hesitancy in expressing them, as we learned early on.

“This bread won’t do,” she said to my wife two days after coming to our house, “will you never learn how to do a thing properly? Here, let me show you.”

Indeed, the bread had been as hard as freshly-kilned brick, but was the comment welcome?

No, but the help was, since Anna Berthe was as often correct as she was blunt. The two women went into the kitchen, where the elder sister taught the younger. The bread improved greatly, but did the relationship?

Ah, I have fallen into thinking as these new people do, they who have brought me back. For we didn’t have “relationships,” then, and there could be no worrying about how they fared. We had instead obligations, to which we attended, if we were upstanding in the eyes of the Lord.

“It’s very easy to fall into the sin of anger,” I counseled my María Barbara later that night. “Be not proud. She means well, though her tongue is harsh.”

Fortunately, María Barbara was a gentle soul, who could rankle, but never sustain the injuries  for long. A slight or insult was felt, yes, but never nurtured. And the next day, the pair would begin anew, and what would it be for the new day? A dress ironed imperfectly, a floor swept badly, it hardly mattered what. I grew weary of the bickering, and needed to assert my God-given authority as father and head of the household.

“There will be no hard words here in this house,” I said sharply. “María Barbara, it is you duty to honor Anne Berthe, as your elder sister. And you, Anne Berthe, will curb your tongue.”

“I’m sure I now my place,” said she, “since an unmarried woman is seldom welcome in a married sister’s home….”

“Enough,” I said, “There will be no more talk thus.”

Did it end? Of course not, but it did drive it down to more manageable levels. And so my wife learned a good deal from her elder sister, and loved her, as the Bible and our good Lord commanded her to do. Anne Berthe, however, never could quite control her desire to meddle, and so she was instructing me, days after I had heard the news of my late wife’s death.

I sighed—what to do? Carl Phillip was but five; his mother had died recently. I was nine when my mother died, but Carl Phillip was half that age.

“I shall talk to him first,” I said, and instantly regretted it. For why should I explain and excuse myself to this woman? Had not my obligation ceased, after the death of her sister? And yet where was she to go, and who would tend to the house and the womanly duties it required? Still, Anne Berthe frowned, but kept her silence.

“Are you well, my son,” I asked, after noting that his eyes were puffy and reddened.

“Yes, Papa.”

“Would you like me to tell you a story?”

“Please, Papa.”

“There was once a man, Albert, who had a stone of great beauty. Where he had found it, and the circumstances surrounding it, the man would never reveal, but people came from miles around to see it.”

“What color was it,” asked Carl Phillip.

“It had the best qualities of every color. It had the purity of blue, the mystery of grey, the vitality of green, the radiance of gold, and the passion of red. Indeed, it was a color never seen—a color that left men speechless with awe. Word spread of the stone throughout the lands, and the multitude would come, begging to have glimpse of it. The simple Albert always obliged, nor would he accept any fee for displaying it. Eventually, word of this stone reached the ears of a wicked man, named Sastro. Instantly, Sastro conceived a plan to wrest the stone from Albert. He assembled a great army, which circled the humble abode of Albert. Sastro, with four of his men, strode into the cottage and ordered the poor Albert to cede him the stone, under pain of death. Very quietly, Albert showed him the glorious stone, and Sastro burned with lust to have it. And so, Albert put it inside a gold casket lined with velvet and gave it to him. Sastro returned to his castle.”

“And then what happened?”

“When he returned to his castle he immediately declared that he would hold a great feast, and that he would display the wonderful stone that had so amazed the multitudes. And so the preparations were made.

“And then what happened?”

“The day of the feast arrived, and Albert greeted each of the nobles with great condescension, since he alone possessed what they did not. They supped and drank, and at last did Albert stand, and reveal the stone.”

“And?”

“The nobles roared with laughter, for what had Albert shown them? Nothing more that a common piece of fieldstone! Thus how the ill-gotten gains had transformed themselves!”

“So what did Albert do?”

“He ordered the nobles from his castle, and slunk to his room. There he wept and wept, as much for the loss of his stone as for the loss of his dignity. He wept rivers, and could contain himself not.”

“I’ve been crying too, Papa.”

Aaah!

“I know, my son, but we must go on. It is a very great sin to despair.”

“Tell me more, Papa, about Albert and the wicked Sastro.”

“He wept so much that one day, he felt a strange weakness in his eyes. And thus daily did they grow weaker, until one day, he could see no longer. After seven days and seven nights of weeping, he had gone completely blind. He left the castle then, and wandered the dusty roads desolate, until Jesus did see him, and inquire of his plight.”

“And what did Jesus say to him?”

“He said, ‘Behold and I shall cause you to see,’ and there did the Albert stand with his vision restored, and the people said that a very great prophet had been sent to them, and the news did spread out wondrously.”

“So is that the end of the story?”

“Yes, and no, for only in the Apocrypha do we learn the other side of the story.”

“And that is?”

“Yes, the savior had restored sight to the thief Sastro, but he had performed another miracle as well. He had made all the rocks in the world as lustrous as the one Sastro had stolen, and the people rushed in a frenzy, picking up stones and putting them in their pockets or buckets or in their up-raised skirts. Sastro alone was still.”

“Why, Papa?”

“Yes, Jesus had restored vision to Sastro, but he had decreed it that Sastro would never see the color of the rock he had stolen. And thus, it was a blessing and a punishment at the same time.”

“And the stones, Papa? Are they still there.”

“As time passed, the people ceased to care about the stones, but if you want my opinion, my son?”

“Yes, Papa,” he said sleepily, for the tale had done it’s trick.

“Yes, the stones are still there,” I whispered, and got up to leave.

Had he heard?         

Dung,Dust, and Whatever....

“OK, so what’s the work of today,” said Lady.

“Recovering from yesterday,” I said, since I had been struck low, assaulted by a thousand demons that had boiled my blood; they did rage through my veins, causing ill humors and vapors to burst from my skin. I did battle all day yesterday with the demons; they were viperous, tenacious, and wily, but with the help of Jesus Christ our Lord, they were defeated, and scattered to the four winds, to wail ceaselessly and await the next victim they might devour.

“Maybe it was something you ate,” said Lady, who though poetic tends not to be mystic, or rather religious. “Anyway, you’re feeling better now, right?”

“There’s no rest for the weary,” I told her, “since the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity seems to be about humility. Oh, and I have to produce not a parable but miracle!”

“Yeah?”

“Right, since this week’s reading is from Luke 14:1-11. And guess what? The miracle lasts only four verses, which is breathtaking speed, as miracles go, but which gives Jesus plenty of time to do a little finishing school etiquette on weddings.”

“Always treacherous waters, socially speaking. Especially towards the end, when everybody has had too much.”

“Jesus doesn’t even get around to that, but rather the seating arrangements, and you know what you’re supposed to do? Go to the lesser room—no instruction there as how to tell one room from another, though perhaps it’s marked—and wait until your host comes up to you and say, ‘hey, what are you doing there? Get back into the greater room, you idiot, where you belong.’ Otherwise you’ll suffer the shame of having the host say, ‘hey, what are you doing here? Get back to the lesser room, you smarmy upstart!’”

“Dear me, who could imagine the social landmines or perhaps quagmires that must have ensnared the men who trod in Biblical times? But really, did anyone need to be told?”

“Well, it’s sort of a metaphor. The whole message—what the Wal-Mart boys used to call the ‘take-home’—is humility. Consider the chorale, which basically says that we’ll give up the big house and the fancy car—all right, it’s ‘temporal glories’ in the original text—in return for eternal life. So we are required to be meek and humble, and not put ourselves above others.”

“Hmmm, I begin to suspect that this message—laudable as it seems on the face of it—has a very nice secondary benefit for some, namely the church. After all, isn’t that just saying ‘don’t rock the boat, don’t get uppity, and we’ll take care of you one day?’”

“Ah, to be so young, and yet so cynical!”

“Well, you should be around here some poetry nights,” says Lady. “And why is it that the poets with the least talent invariably have the biggest attitude?”

“Well, the Biblical texts are silent on that matter,” I said. “But the lyrics of the cantata couldn’t be clearer! It’s the devil!”

“What?”

“Well, consider the bass recitative in the cantata BWV 47, which starts out, ‘der Menshe ist Kot, Staub, Asche und Erde, and that’s when you really don’t want to know German.”

“Why so?”

“Translation: Man is dung, dust, ashes, and dirt.”

“What!” cried Lady, “though come to think of it, some poets….”

“Everybody, including you and I. That’s why we are all ‘miserable sinners,’ which we used to assent to every Sunday, when we went to church. Not only did we assent to it, we said it! Anyway, that being the case, you can imagine how easy it is to fall into the snares of the devil, who roams the earth as a raging beast, seeking whom he may devour. Better be careful, Lady!”

“Should I cancel my book presentation,” Lady said, “or is that going too far?”

“You should tread with trepidation,” I told her, “since the recitative goes on to say that if Christ endured derision and scorn, why should you, miserable worm, pride yourself to boast.”

“Damn, but I bought the dress….” said Lady, who though a poet is still a woman.

“Harlot of Babylon,” I told her, since reading all this stuff is turning me into a neo-John the Baptist. “Salome had more modesty!”

“But how am I going to sell five thousand copies?”

“Give them as alms to the poor! Traverse these ancient streets of Old San Juan, flogging yourself until the blood does gush from the breaks of thy too weak flesh, and place your book, Heal, gently and reverently next the sleeping bodies you do there encounter, that they might wake and receive the message of one ordained to speak. Do this in HIS name!”

“Yeah?” said Lady. “And will you be joining me in this peregrination? After all, you have a book of your own, don’t you?”

“Yes, but never have I contemplated spitting in the face of God by giving a book presentation!”

“That’s completely unfair,” cried Lady, “and besides, it’s also untrue. You want to do a book presentation, but you’ve got it into your head that no one will show up, and you’ll look like an idiot.”

She’s right of course.

“We’ve strayed from the point,” I told her, since when the content backs you into a corner, the only defense is to plead structure. “The point is that for Bach and his contemporaries, the devil and Satan were very real. Do you know that in Germany, the last witches were burned in 1738?”

“Wonderful, the facts you possess. Would you know as much, one wonders, if you had three businesses to run, a teenage girl to raise, a husband to please, and….oh, did I mention those 5000 books to sell?”

“Thy burden is indeed great,” I told her, “but God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”

“Mixed metaphor,” she retorted. “Anyway, I have some casitas to paint. And shouldn’t you be cooking up a miracle?”

And so to work.