Читать книгу Thomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution онлайн

56 страница из 65

Is not altogether alien.

I cannot see again

The world of lively, prodigal sin!

Yet look, Greene! See Christ there,

Not in this innocent building,

But there, there, walking up and down,

Walking in the smoke and not in our fresh air,

But there, there, right in the middle

Of the God-hating sinners!

But here I stand, with my glass in my hand

And drink the pasteurized beatitudes

And fight the damned Ohio in my blood!

***

Tell me, at last, Greene, if you can

Tell me what can come of this?

Will I yet be redeemed, and will I

Break silence after all with such a cry

As I have always been afraid of?

Will I so scandalize these innocents

As to be thrown clean out of the wide-eyed dairies

And land in heaven with a millstone round my neck?²¹

Throughout these lines one can understand the deep spiritual debate and the furious contest Merton held against his own image as writer of pious works. He adopts a harsh critical attitude against the general inactivity, idleness and ignorance of his own monastery, and against a Church no longer able to respond to the passage of time. There is even a moment within the composition when he seems to regret having made the decision of becoming a monk. The struggle within himself gained mounting intensity, as shown in the following poem, with lines full of melancholic touches. One can get a glimpse of his long and contradictory deliberation, bare and vivid as ever.²²