by Paul Martin Freeman (April 2025)
From The Number 284: Jacob’s Ladder)
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—————That which is hath been already; and everything to be hath already been;
—————and God seeketh again that which is passed away. —Ecclesiastes 3:15
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—————Be still, and know that I am God. —Psalm 46:10
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–
And now they’re on a waiting 284;
The bus has briefly stopped at Marvels Lane.
And things that were obscure and dark before
We’re able now to finally explain.
–
The Devil’s working on his ancient dream
To ruin and destroy the favoured Man.
The genesis of this his present scheme
Lies not with Adam though, but Abraham.
–
For Abraham discovered Man inside him
Possessed a truth for those with eyes to see.
It’s been there since the dawn of time to guide him
And reconcile him to necessity.
–
He saw a world eternally ascending
Within his own of temporal confusion
In which was neither starting point nor ending
And death itself was merely an illusion.
–
And here he saw, at Man’s extremity,
That present, past and future—all were one,
All co-existing in Eternity
And what he’d yet to do he’d always done.
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Not always as in endless repetition,
But in the timeless aspect of the deed.
For with this vision came the intuition
By which was Man from mere succession freed.
–
He saw the face of this was Destiny:
The working-out of timeless things in time;
Things ever present in Eternity
Revealing thus an ageless grand design.
–
Intuiting these things he’d done before;
That all that is was always meant to be,
He sensed the world before the Angels’ War
Which had his own conceived of you and me.
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For in this order Man divined a purpose
Concealed within his blind chaotic world,
Imparting sense and meaning to a circus
That round and round in circles ever whirled.
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Within the transient: Eternality;
Within the limited: Infinity;
Within the fragmentary: Totality;
Beyond duality: Entirety.
–
And through this Man encountered perfect freedom
While yet he sojourned in his vale of tears;
Right here he rediscovered timeless Eden,
Rejoicing in his life’s allotted years.
–
He knew himself as temporal and eternal:
One foot in time and one Eternity.
He saw his changing selfhood was external
To some unchanging timeless Entity.
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“Be still, and know that I am God,” It said;
“And nothing ever passes from My Sight.”
“And none though in the Kingdom of the Dead”
“Yet I am with them always through the night.”
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“And I am with you till the end of days;”
“Your seed will plough the earth and make it flourish;”
“To Me your warriors will raise their gaze”
“And dazzle all the nations with their courage.”
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“I am Jehovah, Lord of Hosts,” he heard;
“Creator of the World and Source of Light.”
And on his tribe the silent voice conferred
The knowledge lost to Man of wrong and right.
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But all this to the Devil was abhorrent:
It undermined his handiwork and claims,
For chaos and despair are Satan’s warrant
To bind Mankind in adamantine chains.
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And though the Fiend had always walked among us
With servile minions at his beck and call,
He now perceived the urgent need to crush us
And finish what he’d started with the Fall.
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And so it was the Fiend had hatched a scheme
To devastate the tribe of Abraham….
Table of Contents
Paul Martin Freeman’s book of whimsical verse, A Chocolate Box Menagerie, is published by New English Review Press and is available here. This poem is from the author’s unpublished work, The Bus Poems: A Tale of the Devil.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
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One Response
Compare this view from contemporary science:
“An alternative explanation is to think of time in a “spatial” sense. Our commonsense view of time is as an arrow that moves from the past through the present towards the future, in which we only have direct access to the present. But modern physics has cast doubt on this simple linear view of time.
Indeed, since Einstein’s theory of relativity, some physicists have adopted a “spatial” view of time. They argue we live in a static “block universe” in which time is spread out in a kind of panorama where the past, the present and the future co-exist simultaneously.”
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/life-flashed-before-my-eyes/