He Broke the Sky
He Broke the Sky
Troy T. Catterson
I
Today I looked and saw a crack
against the corner of the sky.
Within the blue a widowed black
crept across my dumbstruck eye.
Like wrinkles bloom on aging skin
That fissure soon began to spread
And fold up like a sickly grin;
I thought: the Sky God must be dead.
The azure fell with shark tooth shards,
with sparkling glass from greenhouse walls.
Its screeches wailed like banshee bards;
My ears still ring those death knell calls.
I screamed to heaven in complaint:
“Can’t anything stay whole,
escape the mortal molds that taint
the inner linings of my soul?”
II
I fled to find a firmer sky
Beneath the earth through Hades’ doors,
Upon Hell’s shelter to rely;
For there the skies are like the floors.
But as I neared that charnel maw
I came upon a hanging tree;
For thus declares supernal Law:
All who to Death’s bosom flee
Must offer their vitality,
And nail their purple pulsing hearts,
In sacrificial fealty,
Upon the gallows’ wooden parts.
That inky stain that fills Hell’s gate
Now coalesced to bodied form.
A flowing gloom framed boney pate
And fluttered in a sulfur storm.
He came with fleshless hands outstretched
In order to collect his due,
Pressed my flesh to wood and etched
A brand collecting crimson dew.
A rusty glint, a knobby nail,
winked beneath his pasty thumb,
its sole intent to pierce, impale,
the essence of my earthly sum.
And then I knew that none escapes
The slowly ripened fruits of choice;
All must chew the bitter grapes,
Must hear the echoes ape his voice.
So as the sharpened shadow fell
I cast one last despairing look
Up out of my appointed hell
Toward the heaven I forsook.
III
Celestial wind flowed from the gash
That mars the sky, like oozing blood
Wells from a wound to soak and splash
The dust, and pound it into mud.
The breath of God thus kissed the ground.
Conflicting elements converged
in dervish dances round and round
until a child of both emerged.
“Bastard whelp of muddy mother!
Secret spawn of phantom father!
You call me by the name of brother,
And claim to be my rescue’s author!
But how can I entrust my soul
To dirty hands like yours,
Fit only for a beggar’s bowl,
Whose silver even Styx abhors?”
Thus so I railed against this child
As briny tears infused a brew
where dregs of disappointment piled
up high to poison every view.
And yet he stepped within the space
Between the nail and me.
The burnished sun lit up his face,
Allowing me to see:
A better version of myself
In worlds that could have been,
Had I but dusted off my shelf
And read the books therein,
A Babylon without the whore,
A Troy whose Paris strides the plains
With honor, willing to endure
Both soldier’s death and lover’s pains.
IV
Now Death is such a connoisseur
Of rarer works of art;
He likes to throw them down the sewer,
Believing that the smart
From such a desecration serves
To heighten through the looming loss
The value the sublime deserves.
For nothing good comes free of cost.
And prone atop his altar lay
This first edition demigod,
A masterpiece on full display:
The Seed of Heaven sown in sod!
Death’s tyrant tooth bit in with lust
To gorge upon his pulpy core.
Yet, as his spirit soaked the dust,
Breathed out of that ambrosial sore,
Eternal Air infected Earth
And robbed him of his sovereign right,
Filled up his sanctum’s buried dearth
with lusty bawls, with breathing light!
V
So, yes, the Sky is broken, chipped,
Its gilded finish faded, scratched,
But not because God’s strength has slipped;
No, every egg must break when hatched.
and every womb must heave and turn
Its brooded babes out into spheres
Whose vistas teach their minds to spurn
The limits of their fetal fears.
And this is the Womb of Eternity!
This is the Egg of Infinity!
He broke the sky for me.
Troy T. Catterson
Poet & Philosopher
Troy's poetry has been published in several editions of The Reach of Song, the annual anthology of the Georgia Poetry Society and in The Stonepile Writers' Anthology. He is an associate professor of philosophy at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.
Photography by Logan Armstrong