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ANDREW GRATTAN
St. Augustine of Hippo, in his study at Carthage in
North Africa, with Dame Theology.
Easter Sunday morning dawns in the choir-stalls of St Paul's, and the new poet has already dreamt during the night, of a robed procession of the Communion of Saints, Martyrs, and Doctors of the Church, in the garden of Gethsemane, witnessed in the presence of Our Lady
beside Christ's tomb at midday. Then, he awakens in a study in Carthage in Africa, before Augustine of Hippo and Dame Theology.
Rare, raspy, high and percushioning, of, a benison, moves
Rollingly, heady humidity at noon, hot and high, high and
Hot, in June, not April, in Africa, moves rollingly, heady
Humidity, hot and high, in swirling unalacritous, moving reams
Of parcelling air, baking Carthage air; but cooled fronds, of
Morning air caressed us, that Easter Sunday dawn, the white
Bearded saint, and I, in the white habit of one penitent,
A white scapular, of an undecided abbey. Clothed, I was, in
A white gown, the tutee to a Tutor. His study, admitted
Flakes of splintering zephrys, driving away, a fuge clump
Fog of night-baked, dead air, scattered upon codices
Manuscripts, books and vermillion papers, scattered
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In indeterminacy upon the desks of the author
Of 'De Civitate Dei', and 'Confessiones'. Lifted up, was
The drooping, long book-pooring head, to espy my
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Infiltrate upon the mardy day, that had delivered me
To his densely fibrous presence. 'Who are you, as
I, was once, a one, who scored those words
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Upon a refectory desk, cutting words of peace and
Penitence, that should open out now my Brown mouth
To your new nuisance, when still are these letters
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To Paula begging notice?' And I: 'O, Augustine,
Ben a Benedictus upon me now, who hope to swirl
Within company, these gowns of ravishing Ravenna,
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Where the frati minori diligently tend, to their postulating
Enterprises. A lady in a girdle gown of white, I gather
There will be, later today, Easter Sunday noon, in the
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Faded olive groves of Gethsemane, because birthed was there,
A gift of write, seeded in me, when a sacred face Florentine
Swirled, out to me five years yonder ago. I am an eject
​
From the sacred Pauline cloisters, of San Paolo fuori-le-mura,
Dominic's true, canis domini, a bounding, Blackfriars puppy, no
Vacuous pompous, but, with a Torch in his mouth, branding out,
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A consecrating goodness, that would evangelize,
And rip out from this undamned spot, a New Gospel,
For England, Harry and St George. O, Augustine,
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I am here, because I know of those dry calcified bones,
That were lain in faint decoration, upon the ways
And by-ways, your motherly tender, Saint Monica
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Laid out, upon the tilling soil littering the faint
Gradient of the via Ostia. O, Augustine, I come
In the name of a deceased Irish saint priest, who sent
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Me to the juicy orange groves of via dei Santi Quattro,
Adjacent the Lateran, that a specializing aqua frizzante, would
Spume upon ferment of my tongue one day, and, I would
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Wash the streets of Florence with my unlazy waters,
To mix the Tiber with Arno and the Thames, the greyhound
To mate modern England to redemption, with him
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Who strophed 'The Divine Comedy', in exile in Ravenna'.
Pensive, hard, and indoctrinated, upon those industrious
Volumes, the undelaying head went up, of him whose
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Chin, was swathed in white and flecks of unrazored
Stubble smothered all over his visage. 'It is I, who
Did rehtoric with Ambrose, and spill, verba, over
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Lecturing desks, in Milan'. And, dropping, from his
Eyes, was a note of imprecation to give up past
Ways of taint. 'Do you have a metalled gift for me,
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Andrea?' And, dropping, I that, which had been given
Me in that too tabernacling cloister. 'It is an anvil,
That I must lodge aside that millenium door of
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St Peter's in Rome, so Sir Thomas More, told me, that
The forty martyrs of England and Wales, will heap
Their holy prayers upon Godless England, he, titled,
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'Defensor Fidei''. And, coming then a blessed train in
Morning's light, - Beatrice and April - , and, a lady with
A crown of chrysanthemums and roses, whose wondrous
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Countenance, proclaimed, her provenance,
Dame Theology, as exiled Boethius, had
Known, Dame Philosophy.
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And, the dead done day, sped out the cloister, the night
Of darkness done, and the morning lark reprised
Her specializing lyricism. 'A lark, a lark, a morning
Lark', I cried. 'O, she is here, to unsecrete, the
Morning anvil, to take me out the tantric wastes of Africa,
And flourish me to the metropolis of Jerusalem;
That this tomba town, be quit, for the auspices of an
Augustinanum? Where is the Morean maid
Of ministry? Where is the minister of 'the manger of
Light', that I will alight upon the most densely fenestrated
Way, and tread a footstep, to the lip of all portals,
And the guiding star proof of the study of the Carthage man,
Who did equilibrium out a passage for Christianity;
Once a rhetoriciam under Ambrose, whose final was
The falsity of the luminous fruit Manichees forgotten?
And apportioned, then, was Augustine within his
Claiming study, and buried beneath flotsam and jetsam,
Books of Theology, that are eternal dished and re-
Dished, to his nodailty of primacy, that all the litter
Of all the libraries theological, is pressed to pre-
Sentiment upon the brown basin of the desk of the
Carthage saint. 'For his obduracy, in that concubinage,
All, that Augustine would know of today, Luther, Rahner,
Scheleirmacher, Bultmann, Tillich, Gutierrez, and Newman,
Is returned to his study, fielding Carthage in Heaven, where
Is recreate, that nobility of endeavour, that Hippo feasted
On, to satiation that in the library of Heaven, where
Is sifted out, dross from the gloss and the chaff
From the wheat'. Titanic stairways and cantilevering
Bookshelves, built up above the byways above my
Head, so that it seemed, all, of that Library Vatican,
The Prefect, could have consumed within aura of its
Benevolent housing. An afric boy, skipped about his feet.
Wondered, I, how I could disturb such a presence
From his rumination, so buried was the weighty
Head about his inordinate reading, and, burying
Myself in the vale of the via Ostia, I inleant my
Heart to that of St Monica, knowing, that I was
Too, an Augustine, to my mother Catherine, for
Endlesss journeys spiritual and intellectual, and I
Recited in tears: 'Impedente die, quo ex hac
Vita dissoluta est', those tear-filled words, all I knew
To unearth him, from his ruminations,
To rouse him, from the over-commune within
Himself. And, above, and around, and moving
In around and stealing soft serenity, shadows
Of the study of St Augustine, and I, in Carthage
At last and in the study of the lusty church
Statesman, who had took to wife in concubinage,
And, an Adeodatus produced. 'From those councils,
I will teach you doctrine, I, as an Evagrius Ponticus, that
You will see, your instrument of grace: Sacerdos of an
Immaculate ecclesia; he was the prime of book service,
Me, Joyce and Newman, that you, serve books, and they in
Turn, would serve you'. And, he pushed up his eyes to sediment
Of wooden shelves. 'Here, choirwood and library wood shelf
Meet; you, amanuensis, will make a patchwork, a Cento as
Proba did, that you will give hope to the world, that condense,
Of this world, will be given, that you cut some of its sally into joy.
Be unmean to Migne, and lace yourself unto Theology and
Patristics, both Greek and Latin, that your heart will wake
To that turtle dove in your being, and, a snippet of divine
Fortitude, you will render, to the faithful of today, so that the
Urbi et orbi Easter Sunday, San Pietro, balcony man, Holy Father,
Sweet, holy, humble Francis, will place a laurel crown, upon your brow'.
And, I looked at magnificence, of shelves around me, seeing volume upon
Volume, page upon page, piling about my head, page upon volume, of Theology.
'The Christ Colloquy', Book V Teologia, Canto I, Grattan.
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