Jesus, on the shores of the river Galilee, receives Andrew as a new disciple and evangelist, in the company of the twelve disciples and Vocatio.

 

In Canto V, Andrew receives the kiss of peace from Christ on the shores of Galilee, to undo the

kiss of Judas, and is received by Vocatio and the twelve disciples. Before the honour of meeting Christ, at the height of his peripatetic ministry, before his betrayal, trial and Crucifixion, he is first transported to ancient Palestine, to witnesses with Jesus, in Bethlehem, the actual occasion of the Visitation of the angel Gabriel to Our Lady in Canto I of  Book VI. This is just one grace that 'the eternal pilgrim' receives for climbing, what Thomas Merton called, 'The Seven Storey

Mountain', Dante's Mount Purgatory in Book I, before climbing the Santa Scala in Rome, in Book VII. Then, Christ kisses true love for the Cross Wood into Andrew, confirming him, on his own authority, as the greyhound, calling upon St. Peter (Key) and St. Paul (Malta), in the company of St. Benedict, St. Dominic and St. Ignatius, to build with him, 'the choir-box of light', so that, the new 'poet of the popes' can eternally cleanse both the 'selva oscura' of 1300, and the 'selva opaca' of 2013, for Christ, Our Lady, the Chair of Peter, and all the Roman Catholic faithful.

 

 So, no longer, then within, St. Paul's, the piercing,

Incense of the censor's boat, gone, from my sensing

Nostrils. And, the scent of the damp straw and raw rain,

 

Filled my head. The soft morning Palestine air, cleared

Around me to see, a lowly serving girl at prayer,

Before, the empty cylinders of circulating atmosphere.

 

Suddenly, wrapped wings, collapsed coveringly, about,

Her shoulders, to shawl her up, within a permutation

Of feathers, that did splaying fan about her, and the colours,

 

Were as of a peacock's gorgeous raiment, or, tribal

Joseph's coat of many colours. Two graceful nods, emitted

From her stationary being at prayer; one at reception

 

Of the winged emissary, the second, to acknowledge

The words of the heavenly presence. Then, audible:

'Let it be done to me, according to thy word'.

 

And, then, turning, to my prayer companion and heavenliest

Guide, to my pilgrim guide, the Saviour of  the World,

     Jesus of Nazareth: 'Quid est amor magister?'

 

I said, and did stay for an answer.

'Love, Andrew, is that which I have

Brought you here to see, for that

 

Special sonnet, maid girl of Bethlehem,

Who had holisticized within her womb, She, Me,

Logos, kernel seed, of, the Word of God,

 

The Word made flesh, me -Jesus.

I breathe upon you now, my spirit,

  That clarifyingly, you might learn

 

Of right love: love of my Cross Love, 

That is dichotomised in my Alighieri's

'Selva oscura'.           If you refract that

 

From the "confusio-intellectus"

Of the three woods, the Virgin's

One generating seed, will become

 

The logos kernel in your heart, that it will be

An apple seed, to the pear seed of book-love that

April harbours within her Wight being, when you

 

Kiss my gracious Logos into her heart, she will kiss

Librarianship into you, and you will kiss libraries

Into her; and, the as divine spark will be fertilized

 

Within her womb, and, the book will fertilize

The secondary word, -so that, a righteous fire will

Consume your heart and soul, and you will be

 

Cauterized and clarified, so that the marriage crystal

Of my Logos will be percussed-ingermed into your heart,

Fractured, by Milton's 'Comus' wood, and tempered, by,

 

Dante's 'selva oscura', and Hebriacum's 'City of God'.

The marriage crystal, is the chrysolite of the

Child of April's 'Othello', that crystal, which

 

Will be impanated within your heart, as the host

Becomes transfixed within the glorifying monstrance.

The marriage crystal, is, the rewarded servus-labour

 

Of Adonai, priest-town Preston, and Institute Newman.

The marriage crystal, is, the librarian labour of Peter Lombard's

Paris, buttressing Boniface's Berlin, and Institute British,

 

And the Logos-Kiss, will subsume Dante and Beatrice,

Paola and Francesca, and Darcy and Elizabeth, that the

Chalice and the ciborium, will meet, at the paten and

 

Altar cloth, and, the word, will wed the book, in the duomo

This docile Easter Sunday afternoon, all Florentine wedding guests,

Gathering'. And, I looked to the tilled land of Israel, and,

 

Habitats of Bethlehem, to see the serva girl, Mary, at kneel.

  And, I looked to Gabriel, the overwrapped wings,

Wrapping her up, within sheath protection of that

 

Raiment of wings, with feather and sentinel salute form. 

'Fire will consume your very being, and, the fire

Of a New Gospel, will spread like wildfire through

 

Your veins. Gone, forever, will be the redundancy, of,

That abbey of the Adonai, as my word-servant Sollom,

Has engraced your being, and graced verbum into your

 

Auricular attendance, that you enwooded, would not labour

Fruitlessly among the unwingborne; you, will be a library

Yourself, via agency, of, my servant librarian, April, so that my 

 

Logos servant, new disciple,  Andrew, will full eclipse, for the

See of  Peter, my Cangrande Ravenna hosted, Florentine.

I kiss my woodenness, into you, Andrew'. And I looked at him, who

 

Was dressed, as a rural gardener, as one low at Pemberley's petunias,

With secateurs and occluded pannier, before the lilies in the

Pond; or the olives groves of Gethsemane, with the thoughtful 

 

Smock of an under-gardener, girt around him.

And I thought of the parable of the sower,

Who sowed on stony ground, and sparse seed fell.

 

'I set the words of the 'Ave Mary' within my pure one

Of the Sabbath Marian vestment Aprilian face, and I set

The words of prayer, into box-sempiverens of my Ark-box.

 

Their seed, the seed I sowed in them, did not

Fall on stony ground, and it fell on the 

Ground of your fertile-crescent heart, that,

 

The yearning for the tri-fold wood, would be reunited

Into my over-wooded heart, -The Cross. As your

Unwooded heart, was over-burdened, I was over-

 

Burdened, with that tortuous lignum, that  

I dragged, betrayed through Jerusalem, by, baying

Of Barabbas mob.   Spirit of Cathedral House Hume,

 

Has sung barley and corn, for you, for twelve years, that the

Angels of Heaven, would stitch a shadow cross upon your

Disciple back, and, you would accept the lovely labour of the

 

Logos-vine vinian in the vineyard; as I imputed

Sonnets into your heart, that the abiding Marian,

Still, presence-cloud at Westminster, would

 

Aprilianize yeastless wood'. And, Christ kissed

The Wood of the Cross, into me, so that it fizzed

And fissured within my core; and I no longer

 

Yearned for the holy choirwood, knowing the wood

Of the Cross, to be allotted to the proven Lot salt

Of my being.  'Be my choirwood gospeller,

 

Andrew, with, no vainglory, within, your being,

No careerist religious, nor, no superior's lackey,

Gloria for me, sole, within, your heart, so, 

 

That, you, will full complete, creatio hominis et

Humanitatis, di-orbs, as I intended, begun in them,

My English playwright and my Florentine poet, 

 

Would find completion in wheel, full circle tragedian

Rainbow of you'. And, I looked, at the low maiden, and,

It was was as that pigmentation, many hued colouration

 

And variation, of Fra Angelico's Annunciation,

Poussin or Brassecco. I wept.

And, that kiss, was not as such as I had known

 

For the thirty pieces of silver, but a kiss of a

Righteousness, I felt planted on my cheek.

And Jesus, brushed my cheek: 'You are no Judas,

 

To the Wood, Andrea'. The Holy Spirit, fanned about

Me, and suffused me with his warm cloud, so that I could

Be at last numbered among those, gathered in at the harvest. 

 

   And, two under-gardeners, came, from

Rustic row, tugging forelocks, with reed-

Bushes in their arms, and weeping willows

 

In their hands, and, they placed those

Yew-white woodednesses about me. 'Fashion with

Him, Key and Malta, the choirbox of light,

 

That we know in Heaven, reap-cull of Moses'

Reed rushes, that, was his, when my Benedict

Blessed my innocens cantor at Adonai, when,

 

The choirwood, received the blanche of his words on

The yew. There was no taint to that tenor, and the Logos

Received gold and gild upon its stretching filaments of gold

 

Straw work, wrecked rushes, final restored upon, 'the manger of light'.

'The Christ Colloquy', Book VI Jesus, Canto I, Grattan.

  

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