Robert Rorabeck - Almost Nation

I have the Almost Nation in the back of my throat,
All the armies gathered and defeated who would once
Have rallied forth to capture her, and to tell her those
Voluptuous words which grow in fair gardens or hang upon
The delicate flesh of the youngest women,

All those failed ghosts are caught in me, all the fish
That Jesus forgot to catch in his nets before the Romans
And the Jews caught him, his father forsook him,
And he realized the terminal mortality of all men
After the Spear of Longinus made a river flow
From his side, and his eyes became dim, rolling like
The sea one last time upon Mary Magdalene.

So, I grit my teeth and make my home far away
Deep within caves within caves, the farther back you
Go the bluer the blackness becomes, so
I have returned to my mother, but nothing is made
Up, for inside here is Plato’s Ultimate Form, the illusion
Of illusions demystified and ugly in its nudity; this
And all that she saw when she hung up my phone
And crawled into his bed.

Now I swallow my soul and grit my teeth,
And from this porch I can see the revolution of
Far away spheres, their small orbits, when they turn away
From me, and when they come towards me; and sometimes
One of the delicate night’s decorations will fall, a
Blazing fire shot down, a God dying, and
I will watch it come down into me, for me to swallow it,
The thing that once was but now is lost,
Inside me the Almost Nation.

Robert Rorabeck

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/almost-nation/