Rembrant's Nightwatchmen's Soliloquies 1

rembrandt's nightwatchman's soliloquies 1

I found myself to be a tabula rasa,
I needed
To be written on, I sought a belief,
To find
A belief I strolled into the corner bar
To examine its ethos.

I saw the bar priests, men in body shirts,
Sitting on high stools, each were preaching
The same sermon

By flexing their biceps, I was told
by a drunk lawyer not to read
the motions literally,
But as Ambroise told Augustine,
read as a figure.

All was vague to me. It was a code
I could not decipher.

A drunk priest offered his interpretation,
But it was only three-fold, based on
Hugo of St. Victor. I wanted four,
I heard a rumor that a raised vein
Is an allegory signifying a resurrection.

I desperately wanted four interpretations,
The literal, the allegoric, the topological
And the anagogic. I needed a faith.

The men in body shirts
at the bar continued their sermonizing
By the flexing of their biceps.

I noted the men all had the same faces,
as if wearing masks
To play a part in a Greek drama, but the masks
Were all the same,
Expressing the same emotion, happy wisdom,
And a faith the defies rational
And logical understanding.

Each was accompanied by a pair of woman’s legs,
Their girl friends
Had no heads, ho hair, no torsos,
Only a pair of legs, a bracelet around one ankle.

I sat in a corner with a shepherd’s pie.
I looked around this pastoral landscape,
But saw no shepherds or sheep,
But I keep watching the men in body shirts flex
Their biceps,
Trying to trying to understand the theology,
So I could
Find a belief,
Find a faith,
No longer be a tabula rasa.

Duane Locke

Posted over on Smokebox