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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TRANSFIGURATIONS, by JAMES OPPENHEIM Poet's Biography
First Line: We spat on the dirt and the flesh
Last Line: Then hell will be emptier.
Subject(s): Poverty; Social Protest
First Line: We spat on the dirt and the flesh
Last Line: Then hell will be emptier.
Subject(s): Poverty; Social Protest
WE SPAT on the dirt and the flesh
Through two thousand years of soul-sick-ness...
And so the poor have been with us,
And the good people have been vile lies, holy and stinking...
Enough of this!
Glory is dirt converted, and magic is flesh transfigured...
Not to the heavens we pray,
And not to a white-bearded God, tottering and old:
From no far world does majesty descend.
But when we pray,
We pray to our own selves:
To no stars outward, but to one heart inward:
The dusty despicable Self on the top
To the sea-vast world-swelling Self underneath...
And in that Self what is not?
There yawn the seven Hells seen of Dante,
There rise the circling Paradises to the sun,
There in the brimstone of lust, and fire of greed, and ice of stormy passion,
Purification goes on, and the making of all that is high...
Go kneel then in the pit of your flesh, in the darkness of the dirt:
There the wings grow and the desire for the sky,
And the fury creative...
Out of the noise of the world the musician shapes his sun-bursts of music,
Out of the loathsome dirt the sculptor moulds his shapes, shining, alive,
And out of the raw desire of man for woman arise
Winged love and the dream of brotherhood and cries of the martyrs...
Look to the flesh: go wipe out poverty:
Then hell will be emptier.
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