VERSION FRANCOPHONE
OTHER
POEMS
SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
(Recited during the Middle-Ages, by Languedoc Cathari perfecti during a deathwatch, much as Buddhist monks would recite from The Tibetan Book of the Dead during a deathwatch).
This poem is entirely of my own invention. I dedicate it to my father who died before I could recite it to him, to all those who confront the uncertainties of life and death heroically, with no valid spiritual shield whatsoever, and to everyone who must die one more time before they can apply it…
Be not afraid,
Oh Nobly Born,
For you are Saved.
Christ will shoulder
Your Karmic Burden,
No matter how damning
It may seem to you.
Breathe deeply,
Breathe softly,
Oh Nobly Born.
Close your eyes
And be at peace.
Die easy, die sweetly,
And be at peace
This one last time.
Let your soul escape
From this failing body,
With confidence, hope, and joy eternal;
As you would approach
Your own wedding,
As Christ taught us.
Oh Nobly Born!
You’ve bailed out from a million billion bodies
Before this one,
In billions of death agonies.
Many, many lifetimes
Full of fear, pain and anxiety
Made up your destiny
Until this day.
You are free from all that now.
After you’ve freed yourself
From this mortal shell,
Like a pilot bailing out from his burning plane,
Your discarnate, drifting soul
Will cruise through space and time
Until you tire of its hard vacuum,
Dusty silence and lifeless drudgery.
You may revisit
All the stars in heaven,
Like a jaded old tourist,
And watch universes
Take birth, flare out and die,
Incredibly beautiful.
Or listen to sweet birdsong all day long,
And simply watch the flowers grow,
From the rising to the setting of the sun.
You may encounter
Beasts, Angels and Daemons
Echoing your own
Desires, Hopes and Fears,
Whom you may choose
To touch and be touched by,
For good or ill.
You may remain on Earth,
Wander its homes and fields,
Haunt familiar places and strange,
Revisit old children and lovers,
Lost and heartsick
For as long as you can bear it.
You will soon tire of this,
Oh Nobly Born.
Sooner or later,
Your soul will long again,
More and more urgently,
For another carnal life.
You will fall back into life,
Free fall backward into life,
As a rock would seek its depth,
And the water its flow,
Down into the current of life
Irresistibly,
Oh Nobly Born.
Once your famished soul
Begins to yearn for life,
You will defer your return a little while longer,
Reviewing impatiently
Many interchangeable conceptions
For a worthwhile rebirth
Into this world.
Oh Nobly Born!
Seek out the unmistakable psychic beacons
Of Mary's Immaculate Conception
And Christ’s Rising from the Dead!
A heavy runway beacon,
Flare-strobed at both ends,
In a dead landscape of furtive couplings
And dismal deaths
Otherwise mournful, carnal and gray.
Ignore those many tiny tidal tugs
Of Karma, Familiarity, Desire and Fear
That will mislead you to seek rebirth
In a mortal infant,
In a familiar setting,
Among your familiars,
And back onto the Wheel of Desire and Death.
Oh Nobly Born!
Abandon your family,
Your beloved friends,
Your many homelands,
And all your possessions.
Take up His cross instead.
Be ye born again onto His Spirit,
As you were born into this failing flesh.
Recall His many parables:
They make perfect sense in this context,
And none whatsoever in any other.
Grasp His lifeline,
Relive His lifetime,
That sacred Life
You could have led yourself
Had you held true faith.
But God is merciful,
Even unto the ungrateful
And unto evil.
Even unto you,
Oh Nobly Born.
Review and repent
Your many unredeemable sins
In the perfect light
Of His Life and Agony.
Oh Nobly Born!
How you will wish
You’d obeyed God absolutely
And submitted to Him completely—
So bitterly will your conscience
Scourge and torment you.
Your recollection of bitter self-betrayals
Will last throughout His Lifetime.
For thirty long years,
Every sin you committed
You will repent a hundredfold.
Every good deed
Will be a weak balm
To your miserable, sin-flayed soul.
Your many sins will motivate you
To speak His Words with the utmost sincerity
And see the world through His shining eyes
With godlike clarity,
Now you’ve removed the beam
From your own eye.
Be brave
When they come betray and crucify you.
Wear His crown of thorns,
Grateful for its painful distraction
From your absolute unworthiness.
Oh Nobly Born.
Your suffering is almost over.
His daylong Agony
Will seem to you the last twinge
Of your infinite pain.
His Calvary climb up Golgotha,
The last faltering footsteps
Of your raw ascent to Heaven.
No more rebirths for you
Onto the Wheel of Desire and Death.
Then you may go with Him
Direct to Heaven,
That very afternoon,
You and the repentant thief, Dismas.
There you will find God
Awaiting you both:
His only Son
And you, His companions
Equally prodigal,
Equally welcome.
You will rejoin all those
Who’ve hurled themselves from
The Wheel of Desire and Death,
And taken up His Cross instead.
He promised to keep
This path is open for all of us,
His children.
You will rejoin your familiars,
Oh Nobly Born.
Sooner or later,
After one less death,
One more or many,
They will follow or precede you
Along this holy path.
Do not trouble yourself
With considerations
Of space and time,
Of before and after,
Of singularity and multiplicity,
Of which soul belongs to which body.
Your faithlessness
Blinds you to the fact
That you may pluck out your own eyeball
And chop off your arm,
Should they offend you,
Without a care,
So little do those things matter
In the make-believe that is your life
That seems vital to you.
You cannot fathom
Matters of this Earth
In the light of Truth,
Much less matters of Spirit.
Have only a little more faith,
Just a shred of hope,
Oh Nobly Born,
And you will be Saved.
Great is the Father,
Great the Son
And Great the Holy Spirit,
Our Comforter
That Jesus promised us.
For it is through Them
That all are Saved
Who choose to be,
Who look and see,
Who listen and hear.
No one can take this from you,
No one can talk you down,
Or extract it from you,
Either by force,
By sentiment
Or persuasion.
You’d already be dead and thus
Perfectly, miraculously and absolutely free
To choose Paradise,
Or climb back
Upon the Wheel of Desire and Death.
Indeed, you might choose to come back
Or might be asked to, nicely,
To help your brethren find the right path,
Bring more lost children into the arms of God,
Oh Bodhisattva.
And you could yearn for another swing at bat,
At the good old days of desire and ignorance,
Another lesson,
Another chance to do it right the hard way.
Or merely cringe
Before Christ's fated Agony and yours,
Or your unworthiness for such an honor;
And submit once again
To the Wheel.
You are perfectly free to choose,
Oh Nobly Born.
Fear nothing, any longer,
Oh Nobly Born.
For even though everyone dies,
And dies again, endlessly,
We are all reborn and saved,
The minute we choose to be,
We who are ready,
As promised.
Matthew 6-5, repeat alone…
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