I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Moses putting a hot coal to his lips, because Moses deserves a more complicated story. I grew up hearing about a “Moses” who wasn’t supposed to be complicated in that hey-he-murdered-someone, oh-and-he-maimed-himself kind of way. He was supposed to be a hero. A spiritual leader. And every fall, the Episopalean priest at my middle school would step us through the mythos of this man and the promise he represented. What a thrill later in life to discover this Moses, who was guided by an angel to put a hot coal to his lips. And the speech impediment that made talking with Pharaoh so difficult.
I like religion that’s more than just some set way for viewing God, or understanding God or even thinking about what the stories around God are really saying. Because I don’t think God is so simple that He (or It or She or They) could really fit one description. God is literally beyond human understanding. That’s comforting to me. Or it’s a real discomfort.
Which is exactly where I feel Mark Anthony Cayan’s poem, “The New Abandon,” exists. Discomfortable! At least I’m discomfortable reading it. Because there’s “a new prophet,” and there’s a priest whose cathedral contains the smell of roses. And, big surprise, the two men are at odds! And the lovely smell of the cathedral’s roses? Well, they’re not inspiring sensually good thoughts in the priest! For him, the roses are in contrast to how corrupt all these people are for liking the spiritual world of “a new prophet.” Haven’t his priestly duties been spiritual enough for this town?
…the priest who doesn’t possess the angel’s tongue opens the cathedral doors and lets out the scent of roses. He sees the town lurch toward the new prophet and feels the wraith-breath of their corruption, feels it pronounce his years. May the prophet sinking into prayer be the one corruption the faithful love together. May their flesh be invaded by pains borrowed from the seasonal workers, pains the great design that outlasts us
(from “The New Abandon”)
Poor priest, bereft of an angel’s tongue! How is he supposed to compete with this new spiritual presence? How come the scent of roses doesn’t allure the people? And I wonder about that moment in the poem where it shifts from a third person account of the priest to a series of commands (“May the prophet sinking into prayer…”). I wonder who is doing the commanding. These seem like orders or condemnations the priest would be giving, but maybe they’re not. Maybe it’s the poem’s speaker listing off circumstances that will transpire for the priest’s personal benefit. How does this “May…” really operate? I don’t think the poem wants to answer that for me. Which makes me very happy! Yes, I’m inclined to read these in the voice of the priest, who likens the people’s corruption with “wraith-breath” (what a fun contradiction this poses to the “scent of roses” from the cathedral). But I don’t see language to substantiate me reading this in the priest’s voice.
The poem feels like one of those transformer movies, where CGI and mechanical sound effects step you through what feels like a full three minutes of steel plates and gears shifting into place so a VW Beetle can become a robot. Whatever this transition from priest as “he” to some commanding presence “may”-ing curses, the poem moves forward, and I hear the small transformation it wills into effect. The poem poses a much larger transformation, though, in the poetic form. Which moves over five sections exploding the scene. Where the first section poses a nice settled statement about the arrival of a new prophet, and the priest wishing to bring him back down to earth, subsequent sections represent what might be described as a serially timed explosion of description, filled with condemnings and other voices and social commentary and circumstance. The quote I’ve included above is from the fourth section. The fifth section is even longer! It’s a complicated situation! And it spells out trouble. “Because redemption precedes ruin…” it intones.
And what I appreciate about this formal gesture expanding and expanding on the scene is how it deceives the reader, or it reveals the priest’s Godly motivations, as well as his human ones. He should be drawn into the prophet’s world, as they are both Godly men. But he is a human with jealousy and a confusion that only aggravates his jealousy further. In Roland Barthe’s S/Z, he talks about the inaccuracy of portraiture. There are a limited number of fixed points the portrait can reasonably consider as it creates a person’s likeness. And the more paint committed to rendering those fixed points, the further the painting gets from including any other fixed points. It’s stuck just trying to be accurate with the limited information it can be accurate. It’s like Cayan’s poem comments on this, establishing its own limitations with the first section’s brevity. And then, commenting on limits by unfolding the details of the scene, by expanding on the identical statement that had appeared in an earlier section. What is the humanity behind holiness? The poem seems to ask.
Helpful Links
- Fonograf 1 issue
- Where Mark Anthony Cayanan is right now!