The Glory of The Wounded Body

My friend, your wounded body has become for me an ark a vessel
To cross the imaginal seas of this phenomenal and fantastic world.

As Shankara said in his prayer to Lord Shiva 1500 years ago
“ how shall I cross the ocean of the world?

Here late at night now I know...now I know!
I shall cross the ocean of the world in the bark, the vessel of my friend’s wounded body.
His body, cut and open, bleeding, torn, returned to and remembered
Sings the great song of the soul’s dance...the soul’s feast here on the surface of the earth,
Here in the great forest of forms which we call the world.

I have found my friend singing of his wounded body
Like a pagan priest chanting in the night before a great fire.
Chanting the names and the deeds...the beauty and speed of the animal
Which in the light of day the hunters will catch and cut, wound and kill.

Your limping and your lost hip have carried me back to Oedipus
And further still to Osiris, mangled , lost , mutilated and finally remembered by Isis who would
not give him up....though he was invisible and dead.
She remembered him so well that he became a
Bridge between the worlds.

Your cut flesh, your body’s insistent song , the lost bones of your left hip
Drag me, summon me to the sacramental table, to the inescapable presence of the soul’s food
to remind me that I have been invited to a feast.

There is only one way to leave this table hungry.
And that is simply not to eat.



A.T. Wood April 17th, 2000