Integrity

Today I heard a Quaker say

That God reveals Himself.

In every avenue of nature.

Why, at wide or narrow

Meeting roads (where

Sons slay kings) do we

Resolve our god’s integrity?

White-faced Titans tore apart

The twice-born Dionysos who

Then reformed at Delphi.

There, rising in a mist

From the Castalian cleft,

A broken yet immortal Titan

Breathed oracles through the Python.

And when the river god,

Dodged Maenads’ bloody hands,

By sinking underground,

He carried Orpheus’ singing head

Into the warm Aegean Sea

To snag a shoreline bush on Lesbos,

And make Apollo jealous.

Gods divide and then conjoin,

But what of man,

Of Byron, for example?

Greece breathed hard on him.

And did God breathe

Through masks of Byron’s being?

What integrity had he?

Pushkin, Lytton, Blunt, Disraeli

Played Byronic games.

Emily and sister Charlotte

Gave him different names,

Set him within frames he shook.

Indeed he made the century shake,

Turned earth unearthly.

In Russia, Poland, France, Germany,

He raked like death the spine of Italy,

Made images of selfhood shiver.

Aristo, diplomat, poet, soldier

Hero, brother, lover, devil, father,

They did not want him in the Abbey.

Heart, brain and body

In separate caskets stand

In his narrow crypt.

Remain embalmed, engraved,

Locks the hue of a Quaker cloak

Colour of occasional grey

In a curl of hair, a mistress’ keepsake.

©Terry Hodgson2020