Peter Lilly: Poems

Night never rushes, but idly breathes through eulogies, in cloud or in stars recollections of the departed douse flickering boredom with the ability to remain still. In the absence of light all that remains are shadows of the faces of those who took themselves out of the future, to forever change the context of their memory. Their last moments are engraved onto the stone of things which I cannot understand, and each weigh as much as the trains which brought their end, where the tears of the witnessing passengers cooled as they ran their tracks downward. Night never rushes, but they rushed through it– not towards daylight but a closer fire, singeing nostrils and systematically consuming combustable flesh in its flames. Written early November, about where the mind goes when awake at night and trying to process recent deaths of friends.

All over this day there are mistakes. How does one hold the figures and faces together? Finite minds cannot do this and survive. The best we can do is run from one to the other mopping up the blood and speaking truth as we go. And we do this best because we will not always be bleeding. Because our blood can never be wine like His. Written 11th November 2012.

Mark 1:1-11 Innocence, but not naivety; baptised, not to be washed but to show us how to wash. Every footprint is firm foundation; hardening the fickle dirt of any other effort. Every footprint, the only path through miry attractions of manufactured desire: distractions from desire, and pseudo fulfilment: distractions from fulfilment. This black tarry silt of identity corrupted, all fingerprints are unique grooves of dirt. Stained skin and aching lungs, greedily respiring with tasteless poison, blinding. But he showed us how to wash I am currently (and have been on and off for the last year and a half) writing a poetic response to the Gospel of Mark. The first part is about the baptism of Jesus which corresponds to the Matthew 3+4 so I have included it in a Bible In A Year blog that a few friends and I are keeping this year.  You can read the poem and related reflection by clicking here: