Far Out is Doom: Chapter 3
A Sacred Epic
Harlie Radio image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
Far Out is Doom: Chapter 3
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
They brought her to me while I sat, alone,
On my rock, split portions, once a statue,
Once on this square, where a courthouse, bank,
And other facades bespoke peacefulness,
An order that allowed the simple worth,
And work, and protection, the flourishing
Was everywhere seen, but not with us now
Except in ruin, but they brought her me
Here, out of habit that this was right ground,
And held her while the roll of crime was said:
“Judge Mitchel we found her drinking the jug,
The most holy, the one with cups reclaimed
From the well where our commune was founded
Before here we came for safety, but also
A lesser life away from those sweet things
That were with us even after the wreck,
But remember, and carried some here
For remembrance to drink on festival;
Yet she drank out of turn the pure water,
When daily we have what is fetid dank
From other wells, those poisoned by the fall
That came with falling pain out of the sky.
Therefore, Judge Mitchel, who knows what is truth,
The worth and the way, give us our justice.”
The well, and the water, of our fathers
It was, in spirit very far from here,
And what they said, in such solemnity,
Was the right: for all what the jug preserved,
For the good of the whole, for our kinship,
For the elevation of remembrance,
And yet this girl had guzzled it all up,
That which sparkled, that had by miracle
Through dusty track and field, our migration,
Through the war with those debased by their lack,
Collecting always those who would share peace,
And the legacy of what we came from,
That had by that miracle with us come,
Always clear, always placid, without dreg,
Or speck, or surface patina of scum
When all around blackest clouds raged and blew;
It was to be so pure that we aspired,
But now she who, for herself, had imbibed,
Must explain, she, this woman, marked like us
By the years of scavenging and huddle
Against rigid concrete, the spar of bones
Which shelter us, this skeleton, our home;
And yet, a will within burnt and drove her,
And did not in ashes die, and she spoke.
“Judge, I acknowledge that you vessel are
Of what has been, and what is righteous done,
That you give fairness, and heal the grave breach
Which our body batters and undoes.
What people can live without this judging?
Without its firmness, and its source in what
Apart from us lives, but lives in us too?
And that, which lives within, is why I drank,
For I thought what good is the Ultimate,
If it is always Ultimate, on high,
And not with us—though with us always is
Bestowal of what is good, for the good
Is the Ultimate, who he is, but too
We need that good in our hearts, the close sense
That beyond justice, or rather with it,
There is love of who we are exactly,
That he is inside us, and so I drank,
For me, and for you, and for all of us
Who in this group live, the Ultimate’s folk.”
She stopped, and I thought she is surely his,
Or, at least inspired by the Ultimate,
And how does one sanction, or what are they,
The judgments against those who break the rule
According to the same and greater rule?
But not lightly does one touch the holy,
Out of turn, without that same apartness,
The consecration that the holy has
In our lives, our lives of innate wrong choice—
Which she had not, and so a base law broke.
“You must to the old well go,” I intoned,
“Though far and fraught it is, and jug refill.”
So I ruled, with fervent wish that she not
Like our hope, the flower, in sorrow end.