Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SHOE-COBBLER IN HEAVEN, by WILSON PUGSLEY MACDONALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SHOE-COBBLER IN HEAVEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Near the white heart of heaven's blaze of glory
Last Line: "his were the plane and saw; mine were the leather and awl."
Subject(s): Shoes; Boots; Sneakers; Shoemakers


NEAR the white heart of Heaven's blaze of glory
I hid beside the shadowless jasper walls,
I clomb the amber stairways draped with throngs,
I scanned the feasters in the banquet halls,
And listened to the poets in rune and story;
And, still athirst, I drank the deific songs
Of Heaven's untiring choir
Which played on lyres of linden strung with flame,
Salvaged from dying suns:
But from the utmost of their benisons
I found no quenching of my thirst or shame.

Wandering, with aching hunger in mine eyes,
I found a garden cropped by fearless fawns,
And feasted there on roses with rich dyes,
Gathered for me by singing amazons
Who danced, more swiftly than the falling fountains,
On the wide, languid lawns.
I watched their white limbs cool the golden glow
That through all Heaven did flow
From the Lamb's throne to the clear glacier mountains --
I watched their eyes atone each absent star;
Their foreheads were of some immortal snow,
Their cheeks the rise and fall of cinnabar:
They danced and grew not weary and I, accurst,
Left them with no abatement of my thirst.

Dark, deep, arboreal
Gardens along Heaven's wall
That hold forever the massive shade at bay,
And guard lest any waif of night
Should invade the halls of light
And bring pollution to the unshadowed day!
Down your still, mossy lanes I cooled my tongue
In bracken pools with winter at their core;
I curved my lips for the wild grape that hung
Its purple like a royal ambassador;
And still my hunger grew
And hideously before me my thirst stood,
And back to the light I flew,
Nor sought again the darkness of that wood.

One took me by the hand
And led me down a gracious gallery
Whose chanting walls were pure chalcedony,
With arches of sardonyx girt and spanned.
Here the amazing angels swiftly played
On golden harps their warm, unanguished songs
That bore no hint of sorrow or of shade.
They sat in groups or stood in companies
Or walked in white-robed throngs,
Chanting unpenitential litanies;
And swiftly from the gallery I freed
My thirsting soul, and by that shadowless wall,
Which one had measured with a golden reed,
I leaned against the jasper, still accurst
With that strange, parching fury of my thirst.

And some one said:
"Cast up your hungering vision overhead
Past all the twelve foundations that resist
The occult fancy of a cabalist:
Sapphire and emerald and amethyst
Crowning a jasper plinth --
The eighth a beryl, the eleventh a jacinth.
The yellowing topaz warms for you alone;
A thousand suns are imprisoned in this stone;
In this one gate of pearl twelve moons are kept."
I looked and bowed in weariness my head,
My eyes, from blazing beauty tired and red:
If one could weep in Heaven, I had wept.

Came unto me an angel slim and tall:
"What do you seek, O Comrade? Whom do you call?
All that the heart desires is here." "Not all."
"Whatever you desire, pray command."
"O, Angel of God, you would not understand.
Look at these marks of shame upon my hand,
These fingers hard and red
From awl and leather and thread.
Only to mortals can a soul explain
The aching of the ragged feet of rain,
The weeping of the wind, the anguish of pain."

And then he led me upward to a throne
About whose base the leaves of palm had blown,
Cast hither by the lovers of the Lamb,
Who marched behind a blazing oriflamme
And sang hosannas loud --
Their robes as white as noonday on a cloud.
But what I yearned was not the throned King:
My lips were mute of praise, nor could I sing.

And from the Prince of Heaven Himself I fled,
Waking wild echoes on the amber stairs
From whose far base came up the newer dead,
Urged skyward by earth's orisons and prayers.
But one foot quickened echoes on mine own;
The singing had ceased; the Lamb had left His throne.
He called my name and fragrant was His breath
With cedar-wood He carved at Nazareth.

Hosannaed, deified,
He came to me with His old earthly stride,
His white robe flowing wide
And open at the crimson on His side.
He showed the bruise of stones upon His feet
And where His hands had calloused from plane and saw --
The long, white hands that plucked the bearded wheat
And broke the hateful tablets of the Law.
His words were fountains and His eyes were bread;
I bathed in every cooling word He said
Until my hunger had gone, my thirst was dead.
"Comrade," cried Jesus, "let us walk alone,
At times my soul grows weary of a throne;
Sometimes I yearn the cool of evening sand
And the strange quiet of the desert land."

Topaz and shining beryl!
High Heaven at full carol
No longer affrighted me, no more I fled:
In Him was all my yearning answered.
The dancing amazons
On the untended lawns
Were swift and lovely in their pale apparel --
I felt not any shame
For my awl-blunted fingers, my cobbler's bend:
If shining companies a Carpenter could acclaim
Should my old leather and thread and wax offend?

Erect and unafraid,
I sound my sandals down a colonnade
Whose pillars, shining through an amber mist,
Were carved from deep, wine-purpled amethyst
Where the dead violet tombs her soul.
By the clear stream of life I drink
Out of a graven bowl;
And past that tree, which bare
Twelve manner of fruit in air,
With lips unsated I no longer slink.
I show my fingers to bright companies,
In shining robes, in the white galleries --
My thread-worn fingers show I to them all,
Crying to angels in the banquet-hall:
"His were the plane and saw; mine were the leather and awl."





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