Christopher Bernard

“Surprised by joy . . . “

The tone of it is the hardest thing to grasp –
    a deeply gratified tone,
      as if a god did live
  and brushed your forehead with his fingers,
             of deeply restrained jubilation,
       the smile that won’t abandon your face,
           despite the malediction
               on your happiness
              by your closest friends
          (to be happy without us – what a disgrace!)

	  	     but
	           once grasped
                          and twisted
                        between your hands
                                 hard (oh softly!),
                            it is not so much a disgrace
                                        as a taste
                                   (the only one to which
                                 wholeheartedly to betray
		                        a Credo
	                         and save the religious hoax
                                           of all its blind mystery)
                                              of the one true paradise:
                                                   between the cinder
	                                                and the ice,
                                                        the pure contentment
                                                                 of the ash
                                                            still trembling from the
                                                                        great
                                                                   conflagration.

_________________

Christopher Bernard is the founder and a coeditor
of Caveat Lector. His novel A Spy in the Ruins
(Regent Press) was published in 2005.