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ANDREW GRATTAN
Beatrice & April: spiritual mother and daughter.
Courtly love again in Florence at the age of 35, and
a new poet, 'the greyhound', created in Florence.
A new literary gospel for today, dedicated to Christ and
Our Lady, and for Pope Francis and all the faithful.
In Book III, Filosofia, the process of establishing the literary figure of April above Beatrice, in
terms of influence and position in The Western Canon is continued, and Thomas More, is sent by the Holy Spirit to St Paul's outside-the-walls on Holy Saturday evening at 6 pm, to instruct
the new poet in Philosophy in a side chapel, and before the tabernacle, within the medium of the wooden monastic choir-stalls. More discusses an aspect of Philosophy, as "the love of the wisdom of the Wood", a personal suggestion of the now, 'Chancellor of the Logos', his office
in Heaven, More receiving this honour, for dying "the King's good servant, and God's first", when he was tried for treason, beheaded and martyred in 1535, during the reign of Henry VIII.
A profound experience of courtly love, again, in Dante's Florence and at the age of 35, "half way along the path we have to go", permits me to fully appropriate and update Dante and his wonderful legacy, in a unique way.
Dante's conception of Paradise in 1300, has been fully completed and updated for 2013, with Shakespeare's additional chrysolite, 'light of Christ', transforming Heaven, with the lamp of Shakespeare's towering genius. The whole of The Western Canon has been incorporated too,
and developments in the history of the Church, in particular, the church councils, Vatican I and
Vatican II. I have also 'utopianised' Dante's Paradise, by filtering it through More's 'Utopia'.
April's new pre-eminence in the female hierarchy, is based on her life and work as a librarian, serving people and knowledge in her profession, which is even a form of ministry. In Canto
XCV of the new 'Commedia', Our Lady discusses the reception of 'The Divine Comedy' within the Communion of Saints. Our Lady actually explains Canto XXX of Dante's Paradiso, to
'the eternal pilgrim' before her, elaborating that April actually eternally occupies the vacant throne of Henry VII, dispensing books, as a monarchical role. This conception neutralizes any disharmony between Dante's political and medieval world picture, and his own spiritual aspirations, rendering his life and legacy properly immortal, through the ennobling fulcrum of courtly love, again, experienced in Dante's own city of Florence. The words 'April Child' at their most profound level, refer to the Paschal mystery of Christ, His Passover, Cross and Resurrection, as explained in The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
And Our Lady, disclosed, from about
Her side, the vacant throne: 'Henry did never sit here,
For, that was Dante and his politics, and that is why, again,
His poem was never known in Heaven, as 'The Divine Comedy',
But simply, 'Comedy', so that my Christ Son of San Paolo, had to
Bipartite initiate 'The Christ Colloquy' from His Good Friday Cross,
Andrew'. And Our Lady looked at me, and, the Divine Mercy,
Blood and water, refracted, streamed from her eyes, in blue and red.
And, before her, knelt April Child. 'As all are Easter
April children, when they leave this sorrowful earth,
To win reward heavenly and eternal, and are adjudged
Of that spring month and of God, look for Henry, my new evangelist
As he is, this lunar phasing of his true incarnation'.
And then I saw a woman-Child in monastic black, no Henry VII:
Trimmed in pink fur beauteous, and Our Lady:
'This is the Child, Child April: April Child, this is the Child
Enthroned; and philosophers and theologians
Will disclose 'The Christ Colloquy', to you, with her mediating intercession,
Heaping, her incense, my conjoined ones, into your thurible boat, and, and an
Elective puff of sacred writing will arise, new sommo poeta, for My Son and Me'.
'The Christ Colloquy', Book I Commedia, Canto XCV, 49-68, Grattan.
'the eternal pilgrim' at 40, before Our Lady in Dante's Paradiso, as it is in 2013.
The strictly hierarchical relationship between the Wood of the Cross, Dante's 'dark wood',
Shakespeare's forest of Arden, Milton's wood in 'Comus' and Beenham wood, (the new 'selva oscura' of 2013, in West Berkshire), with all three English monastic choirwoods featured in the poem, with Christ's Cross at the apex, is affirmed.
Canto I of Book III, Filosofia, begins in the peace of Paradise, after the encounter with the
canon centre and 'child of April', Shakespeare, born and died in April, in Book II. The dense
and rich text of More's masterly 'Utopia', is fixed as the fulcrum of the entire Western Canon,
and engineers the new literary gospel in intellectual integrity, accessing both Greece and Rome, both Aristotle and Aquinas.
Beatrice and April discourse before Mary, in the presence of her handmaidens, Rachel and Lucy. April's smile draws Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, before Our Lady's throne.
'April, you, who are a glory of God, will you not
Help him, you, for whose sake, when suive
Miltonic blind, goaded, he left the common Adonai crowd?'
And, the cry, came up again:
'April, you, who are a glory of God, will you not
Help him, you whose sake, when suive
Miltonic blind, harassed, he left the common Adonai crowd?'
And, the cry, yielded up again:
'April, you, who are a glory of God, will you not
Help him, you, who for whose sake, when suive
Miltonic blind, tearful, he left the common Adonai crowd?'
And, the cry, univocal went up to engrace Heaven:
'April, you, who are a glory of God, will you not
Help him, you, for whose sake, when suive
Blind, he left, the common Adonai cowl-herd?'
And then, came back again, in their thousands, and
Their tens of thousands, pouring, came back, in their
Tens of thousands, and their hundreds of thousands,
Angelic orders, through the casings, lit, casings, lit,
Coruscating, circles, casements of Heaven, serried,
Cherubim and seraphim, thrones and dominions, powers
And virtues, all heavenly angelicities inmixed: 'April, you, who
Are the most chief glory of God, for, holding in potentia, a
New gospel in your heart, will you not help him, for whose sake,
He left the common Adonai crowd? April, you, who are now,
The most chief glory of God, will you not help him, you, for
Whose help, he pants like the deer that yearns for running streams?'
And, came back around, patterning flatly, panning around,
And, lit chambers of the Church Fathers, Ambrose, the Latins,
And the Greeks, Cappadocians, and fathers of the desert,
And Basil, of 'The Lesser Rule', and global, industrialized
City monasteries, dry Pachomius, eremite Antony, and,
That penner, of the earlier Rule, 'The Rule of the Master''.
Till, liveliest Lucy, she, who grants all sight, to those
Who would Learian see, from her Marian maid-service,
Delightful, from that first originating council,
Feminine, at rosarian impeach, did she come
Again, that lovely saint, till, in pliant correction,
She spoke to the magnificence around her:
'April, sweetest April, who, you, when babe essence,
Were lodged within that fabricate manger of light, fused
Increate, with he of the scaffold servant, Roper's More,
Whose words, the Heaven poet laureate, Alexander Pope,
Did decorate into a manger 'utopia', for the logos to be
Encherished and inheld here above, within that sugarous
Crystalline confection -light manger- dextrous verbosity;
April, sweet April, of the manger of light, of logos sarx;
April, you who are the most chief glory of God, will
You not help him, you, who with the Florentine poet
Magister, your spiritual father in Heaven, he, who,
First, tantalised, left, the common Adonai crowd, to
Revisit Inferno last night, Purgatorio and Paradiso;
Will you not help him, twin, he who holds Boniface's claimed
Clavis, you two gemini twins, who, with your beloved mother
Spiritual's help, and, at prayer intercession, of an Irish
Sacerdos saint-priest, was brought back to life, from
Many years of tears of loss and sorrow, and, at whose
Intercession, he rediscovered the love of God
And the desire for good, after he found himself
Lost in that dark, troubling Beenham wood,
Where, there were many thorns and brambles,
And St Benedict himself, halted the very hail
Of hosannas in Heaven, in distress, that his
English sons, in their cold lent habits, would blank
Truth, so much so, that they would switch such a
Lay of light, -the June Berkshire sun upon a back,
So that Heaven's own Alighieri, has ceded place and placed,
In divine judgement, il sommo poeta's bay wreathe upon
His brow, and Lucan consoloed him, with the naturality
Of Lucretius too, the one whom calligraphic Poggio
Knew, prepared, dated, Firenze for flourishment,
With, 'De Rerum Natura'; he, Andrew, a new
Renaissance, that there would be a renaissance
Within him, and there would be a renaissance
Within present church of today, a renaissance,
The greyhound final come, anno domini, two thousand thirteen,
And there, would be a renaissance within the Tuscan's Italy too,
With a new gospel English, no Italian terza rime. April, will you
Not help him, your most devoted follower, Andrew, you, for whose
Sake, he left, following suive blind, impulsion, of the Holy Spirit,
The common Adonai crowd?' And, Beatrice paused in prayer,
And turned her lovely eyes from the enchanting
Manger-crib, and Heaven felt the wound, that
Her two luscious orbs, did not penentrate
It further, a scintilla of moment lost, lost forever,
To her engraced beams. And, liveliest Lucy, was
At courtesy again, to impeach the aid of Beatrice,
Contemplative with Rachel, a happy pair, before
Our light, mindful of all her Marian English image,
Thoughtful-pensive, within, the manger of light.
And Beatrice turned to Rachel,
And Rachel turned to Lucy,
And Lucy turned to April:
'April, you who are now, the most chief glory
Of God; will you not help him, for whose
Sake, he left the common Adonai cowl-crowd,
To glimpse Hume's Hebraicum, before lodged
Before the monstrance, in a collegio to Rome,
He felt that blind Puritan reflood his spirit anew
That had been washed away, parted from the
Holy choir enclosure of the Adonai, where his blood
Was baked upon the choir-ledge, and the Holy Spirit
Put the logos in his heart, surrounded by the
Flowing cloths of court monastic jesters, when, he
Had sought monks senex in wisdom and Jesus-soul
Solidarity?' The panorma of Heaven's light,
Caught that one's eye, ruminative in her cloister,
So that light and shade, struck her face, caught,
Between 'L'Allegro', and 'Il Penseroso', between
Contemplation and action. And April, mindful,
Of her spiritual mother, Bea, she who had wed
Her finger to her daughter's lips, to silence her,
That the cot of Christ's learning, would be placed
Within her heart, turned her head, that, the pleroma
Of Beatrice's understanding would be placed within
Her heart. April smiled. "Contemplata aliis tradere".
And then, a rushing cohort came, not
Monastic, but discipular, that rush of men,
Who had won the journeying linen cloths in
Happiness, that Baptist John, had turned to a
Greater stream, from his precursing Galilee,
When a baptismal rush, had been splashed
Upon Jesus' head. And the disciples came,
The prime ones four, who had penned
The holy gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke
And John, and the other eight, in train,
As there is one more, to plus
The seven deadly, to make an
Incarnating one, in the slip of the one.
And April, turning,
So that she was co-fixed
Within the eyes of Beatrice,
Said to the animation and
Delectation of Heaven, and
The gyrovaguing discs of circularity
Containing beatific essences of all the saints.
'Beatrice, my most beloved mother spirtual,
Will you help me, so that I can help him, God's
Prospero spell, I, for whose sake, he left the common
Adonai crowd, so that the summation of all Philosophy
Will be within my orb and light, and that I may lead
My most devoted follower, Andrew to Her, -Mary?'
'Yes, Librarian, I will help you, that you might
Help him, Library, you, for whose sake, he left the
Common herd, and Vocatio cherished, so that he might one day
Be enwooded within that redeeming lignum, that Arkwright and
Sollom tended, the wilting Adonai tree, that the good news
Might make it leafy again, where dank mud has overmarked
Its dry, withered leaves; no learning or holiness, but, lying,
Careerism, unchastity, patronage and preferment, the holy 'Rule',
Manipulated, much unread'. And, smiling, from within
The casings, of that dusk enveloped manger, came back
That voice of Aprilian tenderness: 'Sweet More, Charterhouse,
Hair shirt, will you not help him, for whose sake, he left
The utopia of that Rex university, to wander in the die
Of the Fisherman's footprints, until, he came, famished and
Wasted, into my sight, enchanted by the Arno flow, unenhusked?'
'The Christ Colloquy', Book III Filosofia, Canto I, Grattan.
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