How carnal the whole thing seems to the finer grain,
(aware how reliably flesh turns meager or shoddy,)
crude, to the sharp delicate filter of spirit and brain
that knows, in the longest run, how untriumphant is the
body:
this exalting of supper, at a crucial date,
this homage to appetite which, admittedly, always finishes
flat on its clown’s face, now, or soon, or late;
this manic multiplication of wine, of oily fishes.
Spit, in the healing; blood, on the handkerchief;
and after a resurrection, you would think
sticking a hand in a hole, a shabby proof.
Could such, reunited, do no more than eat and drink?
It has something to do, no doubt, with the common lot,
(common being the operative word;) the gross
degrading of the word, in the curious plot,
to an estate, say what you will, of bizarre loss.
Well, let be the blood, spit, fishes of the story,
its strange denouement, with cannibal overtones.
Well, let the battered, the carnal, the dying munch on
glory,
the marrow cry “soon, soon” to the cooling bones.
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