The Gift

And yet there are times

when this melancholy

Is exquisite, sensual, sublime, even sane

as if my life on earth

were awkward, clumsy

but here I fly.

Is this my home, the place I feel 'safest'

most contented with my dis-ease

Where amid my own tortured screams

I hear most clearly

Lying awake, un-anaesthetized, savouring

every searing stroke of the surgeons blade,

a connoisseur pain

And my quest while I am here ?

To map the contours of Hell ?

To write the 'Geographic' of the depths

and to publish its maps,

to show in full colour its grim inhabitants ?

To bring before the world

the discovery of the horror

of the frigid, friendless, lightless depths

of the submarine abyss of crushing despair.

Yet even in this emptiness

this desolation

I am surprised.

I have a companion in pain

Is this the place to which Jesus descended

the source of his cry of anguish on the cross

when he 'descended' into hell,

forsaken by the father

Is it in this place that I have my identification with Christ,

My 'crucifixion' with him ?

Is this my immersion into his suffering

or His into mine ?

Are we sharing the same suffering,

the same acquaintance with grief ?

Is this why I feel so much at home ?

© Malcolm Scott  2002