Ikons

Abstract

Ikons John Robert Lee (bio) To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. ephesians 3:10 What am I? Who is my name? What do I say now?How to translate graffiti of hieroglyphs & petroglyphsacross catacomb stones, offer exegesis of heart prophesayingssketched in blood-red above my head?The plague slithers like mould across slave-built wallsdown lime-lined interstices to find goblet or platteror complicit embrace.What lonely disciple figured his fantasies in the sacred fish,the holy X, the mark against the pestilential beast? What now about now? What time is it? Where am I?Days collapse across sundials with paranoid frenzy,sabbaths gather without us in their distanced pews;crowded streets protest the mad President, monuments to hate,teargas & batons in our faces, knee in our necks;the pestilence is global, as are violence & corruption,perennial trafficking in bodies & souls, the arrogance of blasted blasphemies.Loneliness deepens, love & faithfulness are speculative fictionimagined like some Disney fairy talefrom pallets of the locked cells we are.In these last days of exile, departure at hand,I man hold the Lion of Judah high upin all itations. Whose earth is it? Why don't we see? Which word to listen?What to talk now?Who conceived grills in thick walls behind green windowsto hold black men who wore the Imago Dei across flaring noses & sensuous lips [End Page 47] who plotted their abduction & degradation from the Eastern landwho assaulted their wives & mothers beyond terrible imaginationwho gave themselves to such evil & why? why? Is any theory enough?Is the answer hidden in metaphysics of antiquity, some Cain & Abel story?Of course black lives matter, of course,against barracoons of Goree, coffles, slave caravels,plantations, lynchmob klan, cops with their knee in our neckscages of overcrowded prisons, their doors of no return—& we raise word against black-on-black hatredscorrupt black politicos, traffickers in black bodies today& all perpetuated, continuing crimes on black creation.Whose man it is? Whose earth it is? Whose judgement-word it is?Soon come dread. Soon come. Jah. How to hold love? Whose love is love?What is love so insistent, so urgent, so hungering?Why is love?The isolation existential, confinement solitary.Behind the nineteenth-century brick fortress, through the narrow red windowsomeone strains to look at someone crossing the yard below.Divine Mystery will not be contained against barred flesh.Soul wants soul to union, beyond any possible translationor theological exposition. That is Man.We return from, we return to, each other. And to God. & after, where? Who there? What to see?After that thick, high door open for the last parole?However you pass through.Zion for the righteous sufferer,the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove on throne of ivorythe saints in gardens of herbs by the river of lifein light of rainbows high & lifted uplike now, on the grey walls of Babylon. [End Page 48] John Robert Lee John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. His Saint Lucian Writers and Writing: An Author Index (2019) was published by Papillote Press. His Collected Poems 1975–2015 (2017) and Pierrot (2020) were published by Peepal Tree Press. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press