At Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds
in the dissenter’s graveyard, time’s
erasing headstones’ sharp outlines
and unchiseling inscriptions—grass
overgrown, moss spreading, sepulchers
held intact by ratchet tie-down straps
—weather slowly
grinding stone into “sands
stretching far away,” &
there’s Bunyan, the path
to Cromwell’s closed, Defoe has
a towering obelisk, and below--
under a fig tree and a little
off to the side—is this:
NEARBY LIE THE REMAINS OF
THE POET-PAINTER
WILLIAM BLAKE
1757–1827
AND OF HIS WIFE
CATHERINE SOPHIA
1762–1831
a smattering of small gifts strewn
about the headstone’s foot--
a cactus, a candle, a match,
two clementines, aluminum foil,
a yellow wrapper, two white
oven-baked clay figures
in phallic & yonic shapes
—atop the stone, mostly
coins, guitar picks, and pebbles,
a bottlecap, a clothespin, a ring
Blake would dismiss gravesites’
fixation upon the bodily--
after all, Mental Things are alone Real
what is Calld Corporeal Nobody Knows
of its Dwelling Place
it is in Fallacy—why
he was less afraid of death
than walking into the next room
--if you art the food of worms. . .
how great thy blessing!--
especially if a worm to you is
an infant wrapped
in the Lily’s leaf—Blake’s own worms
did their postmortem work so long ago,
I cannot even say Blake is under my boot-soles
without betraying his imagination,
so I think of Blake’s life
ending with a vision we can’t know--
Blake’s last vision is the silence of the salt
on your tongue
instead of the honey
you were expecting,
it is a bird breaking
into light, it is deep-red
wine poured over a cold stone
and sopped up by moss,
a woman turning into
a nightingale, a newborn lamb
in a whiteout of snow, a tiger
halved by deep shadow,
a never-before-seen sun
rising above dark rocks
erasing headstones’ sharp outlines
and unchiseling inscriptions—grass
overgrown, moss spreading, sepulchers
held intact by ratchet tie-down straps
—weather slowly
grinding stone into “sands
stretching far away,” &
there’s Bunyan, the path
to Cromwell’s closed, Defoe has
a towering obelisk, and below--
under a fig tree and a little
off to the side—is this:
NEARBY LIE THE REMAINS OF
THE POET-PAINTER
WILLIAM BLAKE
1757–1827
AND OF HIS WIFE
CATHERINE SOPHIA
1762–1831
a smattering of small gifts strewn
about the headstone’s foot--
a cactus, a candle, a match,
two clementines, aluminum foil,
a yellow wrapper, two white
oven-baked clay figures
in phallic & yonic shapes
—atop the stone, mostly
coins, guitar picks, and pebbles,
a bottlecap, a clothespin, a ring
Blake would dismiss gravesites’
fixation upon the bodily--
after all, Mental Things are alone Real
what is Calld Corporeal Nobody Knows
of its Dwelling Place
it is in Fallacy—why
he was less afraid of death
than walking into the next room
--if you art the food of worms. . .
how great thy blessing!--
especially if a worm to you is
an infant wrapped
in the Lily’s leaf—Blake’s own worms
did their postmortem work so long ago,
I cannot even say Blake is under my boot-soles
without betraying his imagination,
so I think of Blake’s life
ending with a vision we can’t know--
Blake’s last vision is the silence of the salt
on your tongue
instead of the honey
you were expecting,
it is a bird breaking
into light, it is deep-red
wine poured over a cold stone
and sopped up by moss,
a woman turning into
a nightingale, a newborn lamb
in a whiteout of snow, a tiger
halved by deep shadow,
a never-before-seen sun
rising above dark rocks
A Vision of the Last Judgment, Petworth House
“[I]ts vision is seen by the eye of every one according to the situation he holds.”
—Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment
—Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment
sudden inexplicable sadness
leaving Felpham—training
through Sussex to London, I eye
green and pleasant land of Beulah
dotted with sheep, the odd
white hart—but before
tracks lead back into cityscapes, I
surprise myself, feet moving before
mind’s made up, detraining impulsively
to pilgrimage—off at Pulborough,
bus to Petworth, whose House
houses the 1808 (latest
surviving version of) A Vision
of the Last Judgment,
which, over the course of two years,
across seventeen trips to Buffalo, I’ve had tattooed
painstakingly, in black-&-white, on my upper-left arm--
eternity opening to the top of my shoulder,
the dragon with seven heads & ten horns
in hell above my elbow, the rising labors
of resurrection along my bicep, along my tricep
the dragging energies of damnation
as the wicked fall into flame
bound & dragged--
in person
Blake’s original pen and watercolor work
—over 50 cm high, 40 cm wide—is infinite
in its clarity—each diminutive form,
though hundreds upon hundreds of them,
each shockingly vivid, deserving
individual study—and
although I’ve seen this painting
in countless reproductions, and even more often
its miniature reversed in a mirror—not until I
back away do I see
the whole everything, both the many
and the one—the contrary rising and falling energies and
the single swirling pattern—a diagram
of any individual human spirit—of Albion’s,
of yours, mine, your friend’s,
the person’s you most despise—everyone
—the cyclic motion of our errors
and redemptions midprocess--
the fall of mental mistakes
against the upthrust of vision’s
imaginative creation—a Satan plunging headlong,
away from the “human form
divine,” who sits enthroned,
embodying Blake’s definition of divinity:
mercy, pity, peace, and love--
if any of us could be
split open and spiritually imaged,
your very consciousness
the object of witness, this is that
pictured—this painting is how it feels
to be consumingly known, to be sight-swallowed--
not this or that aspect but
the all of you—once,
in waking,
I sat up to see a figure of intense light
hovering above me that terrified me at first,
and when terror subsided, I’d never felt
so small, so nakedly observed, so humbled,
which was all somehow comforting, too--
the light sent shivers of awe
all down me, every inch
of my skin buzzed as if I were about
to step out of my bones,
which is just as I felt
standing in front of Blake’s great Vision,
how I like to think Blake felt
seeing that vision on the paper
as he painted it there for all to see
leaving Felpham—training
through Sussex to London, I eye
green and pleasant land of Beulah
dotted with sheep, the odd
white hart—but before
tracks lead back into cityscapes, I
surprise myself, feet moving before
mind’s made up, detraining impulsively
to pilgrimage—off at Pulborough,
bus to Petworth, whose House
houses the 1808 (latest
surviving version of) A Vision
of the Last Judgment,
which, over the course of two years,
across seventeen trips to Buffalo, I’ve had tattooed
painstakingly, in black-&-white, on my upper-left arm--
eternity opening to the top of my shoulder,
the dragon with seven heads & ten horns
in hell above my elbow, the rising labors
of resurrection along my bicep, along my tricep
the dragging energies of damnation
as the wicked fall into flame
bound & dragged--
in person
Blake’s original pen and watercolor work
—over 50 cm high, 40 cm wide—is infinite
in its clarity—each diminutive form,
though hundreds upon hundreds of them,
each shockingly vivid, deserving
individual study—and
although I’ve seen this painting
in countless reproductions, and even more often
its miniature reversed in a mirror—not until I
back away do I see
the whole everything, both the many
and the one—the contrary rising and falling energies and
the single swirling pattern—a diagram
of any individual human spirit—of Albion’s,
of yours, mine, your friend’s,
the person’s you most despise—everyone
—the cyclic motion of our errors
and redemptions midprocess--
the fall of mental mistakes
against the upthrust of vision’s
imaginative creation—a Satan plunging headlong,
away from the “human form
divine,” who sits enthroned,
embodying Blake’s definition of divinity:
mercy, pity, peace, and love--
if any of us could be
split open and spiritually imaged,
your very consciousness
the object of witness, this is that
pictured—this painting is how it feels
to be consumingly known, to be sight-swallowed--
not this or that aspect but
the all of you—once,
in waking,
I sat up to see a figure of intense light
hovering above me that terrified me at first,
and when terror subsided, I’d never felt
so small, so nakedly observed, so humbled,
which was all somehow comforting, too--
the light sent shivers of awe
all down me, every inch
of my skin buzzed as if I were about
to step out of my bones,
which is just as I felt
standing in front of Blake’s great Vision,
how I like to think Blake felt
seeing that vision on the paper
as he painted it there for all to see
|
Geoffrey Babbitt is author of A Grain of Sand in Lambeth (winner of the 2023 Betsy Joiner Flanagan Award in Poetry) and Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light (Spuytin Duyvil 2018). His poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, Washington Square, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Utah, is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Seneca Review. More at geoffreybabbitt.com
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