Came a red moon the night between the Easter vigil
and the morning of the resurrection and that shade
made a horizontal of the window rail and a vertical
of half the curtain, a cross—and because I wasn’t well
(some spring distemper) lying alone in the guest room
where we also kept a small shrine and our mothers’ ashes
Stephen sleeping on an upper floor but I wasn’t asleep
the moon too bright and part of me knowing I had begun
to see a cross only because it was almost Easter 2015
and another part said but I’m not the kind of person who sees
crosses in curtains long finished with The Church or churches
but nevertheless here at first seemed to be three shadows
three crosses just like in the story which after a time became
one and then O shit a tree The Tree the World Tree the tree
of the world and behind my eyes came a kind of light
and I thought to myself I have not recently taken drugs
have I or gone strictly-speaking crazy like Philip K. Dick
who experienced his Vast Active Living Intelligence System
as a pink illumination bearing the message that his infant son
had some kind of knot in his gut that could kill him (which
a reluctant doctor confirmed and saved him from)
and have I anyway gotten my antidepressant dosage right?
My light too though not pink was somewhat real because
after a while it went away which is the test of real things
and then it was night again noche oscura as St. John of the Cross
might have put it and I knew I was in danger of making of all this
a meaning because it was Easter and outside the rabbits
fucked in the chamomile wearing burdock burrs like crowns
but still could there have been any part which was not just
of my making Christ the vertical and the horizontal Christ
Ygdrassil the Allfather hanging nine days without food or drink
Christ the plane tree Platanus orientalis with lights in it
that Xerxes stopped his armies to adore and away from which
he would not move again until his goldsmith struck the image
on a medal which afterwards he wore always next to his heart.
At 11:11 in the morning from this vision I awoke I who do not
have visions or want any but for all that is the sad world not yet
utterly emptied of parable? Does the young corn still put
his ear above the soil like a flute?
—April 4, 2015, Blood Moon
The web versions of our print articles are now hosted by Duke University Press, Tikkun’s publisher. Click here to read an HTML version of the article or to download the PDF version.
Tikkun 2017 Volume 32, Number 4:57