I have to admit that the notion
of “an eating” as Christianity’s most sacred ritual has always seemed bizarre
to me, even kind of weird and creepy. As a person raised Catholic, I’ve certainly
done it often enough. The point, it would seem to me, is that the taking in of
the physical bread is a symbol of our oneness with all of creation, as we
physically take the food—both physical substance, and spiritual—of creation and
integrate it into our bodies and our spirits. I’m interested these days in how
spirit, intelligence, emotion and body all articulate in the person, and this
is one way onto that avenue of meditation. As for actual transubstantiation…not
going there for now. I’m too invested in metaphor, which is plenty actual enough
for me.
If one is concerned with “the
death of the death of love”—a thought that Henry here has trouble admitting into
his head, being too bitter and full of the death of love on its own—then that metaphoric
double death springs you right back into life and love. Henry’s not paying
attention though, a lost cause, too bitterly gnawing at his own heart, a
metaphoric self-eating. If you eat
yourself do you disappear, or do you transmogrify to pure excrement? (We’ll go
with disappear…that’s what Henry has
been doing in other ways all along.)While eating is an odd enough concept if
you think too hard about it, seems as good a way as any to integrate body and
spirit. Eat up! The organelles of the eukaryotic cell are an extended
consequence of failed digestion, the merging of bodies more than just spiritual
metaphor. Anyway, here’s a poem, about the sacred and physical rite of eating:
Eating
Food
Like sex, it’s physical.
Cheese, the sweet cow’s milk
altered By the absorbing and crapping
Of fats sugars proteins
By all those bacteria in their
Endless infinitudes, dividing
And dying in a mute organic
Micro-ecstasy, making that good milk
Stink like the feet of angels
The French say, who know cheese
And who make sex
And food their best cultural pillars
Because the dirty French
(Which is what we tight-assed
Metaphorical Puritans think of them—
Admit it) take their lives earthy
Resplendent of powerful smells.
Napoleon wrote Josephine:
“Home soon. Don’t bathe.”
So, I can stand a little grit on my lettuce,
And I don’t wash the horseshit
Off mushrooms because
I’m not offended by a morsel
Or two of horseshit in the eggs
Of my good omelet.
Grape juice grows yeasty and burbling
Ruined and soured to dryness
Until we euphemize it
To elegance in ringing crystal.
And yes, I’ve made sausage,
Saw the pig’s throat
Cut, heard his ebbing squeals
(Pigs know exactly what’s happening)
Smelled the whole round
Full stink of his fresh blood,
Then ground his meat and fat, mixed
With marjoram and paprika
Salt and thyme, and ate
His liver for breakfast.
I didn’t gag. The bread
Alongside that wholesome partaking
Of pig flesh and wine
Was the body of wheat
Wheat the body of land
Land into my body and hers
Our food the sex of the Earth
Rich with the dark fragrances
Of a consensual communion.
KZ
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