A Path Through . . .

(Found here ) He found the body gross, like mutton-fat, the mind sour as buttermilk, as crud. Now he wakes with dawn, still in darkness, grown old, bones creaking like a grating door. Sometimes he feels like the farmyard mutt useless on three legs, all straggling hairs; what wisdom he bears is useless as a shadow, eyes lifeless as pond-water. But he has settled to a comforting placidity. Prayer is silence, spirit-bones and soul-blood fluctuant as breath. He moves towards the judgement-door, and — though humankind has mapped the galaxies, filled grains of sand into a glass and called it time — he knows the young man Lazarus fell asleep and Jesus, weeping, slowly moved to waken him. ~John Deane