"HEAVEN" 
by  J Tessimond

In the heaven of the god I hope for (call him X) 
There is marriage and  giving in marriage and transient sex 
For those who will cast the body's vest  aside 
Soon, but are not yet wholly rarefied 
And still embrace. For X is  never annoyed 
Or shocked; has read his Jung and knows his Freud, 
He  gives you time in heaven to do as you please, 
To climb love's gradual ladder  by slow degrees, 
Gently to rise from sense to soul, to ascend 
To a world  of timeless joy, world without end. 

Here on the gates of pearl there hangs no sign 
Limiting cakes and ale,  forbidding wine. 
No weakness here is hidden, no vice unknown. 
Sin is a  sickness to be cured, outgrown. 
With the help of a god who can laugh, an  unsolemn god 
Who smiles at old wives' tales of iron rod 
And fiery hell,  a god who's more at ease 
With bawds and Falstaffs than with pharisees. 

Here the lame learn to leap, the blind to see. 
Tyrants are taught to be  humble, slaves to be free. 
Fools become wise, and wise men cease to be  bores, 
Here bishops learn from lips of back-street whores, 
And white men  follow black-faced angels' feet 
Through fields of orient and immortal wheat. 

Villon, Lautrec and Baudelaire are here. 
Here Swift forgets his anger,  Poe his fear. 
Napoleon rests. Columbus, journey done, 
Has reached his  new Atlantis, found his sun. 
Verlaine and Dylan Thomas drink together.  
Marx talks to Plato. Byron wonders whether 
There's some mistake.  Wordsworth has found a hill 
That's home. Here Chopin plays the piano still.  
Wren plans ethereal domes; and Renoir paints 
Young girls as ripe as  fruit but not yet saints. 

And X, of whom no coward is afraid, 
Who's friend consulted, not fierce  king obeyed; 
Who hears the unspoken thought, the prayer unprayed; 
Who  expects not even the learned to understand 
His universe, extends a prodigal  hand, 
Full of forgiveness, over his promised land.

(Taken from "The Collected Poems of A S J Tessimond" published by  
Whiteknights)



-- 

Richard Emblem

"God loves you and there's not a thing you can do to change that."
(Rev Tom Van Culin, Honolulu)