Four Last Things
 

Four Last Things

The rain falls on us all, just and unjust,
those who sink in doubt and those who trust
in God, growing weeds of hate and seeds of love.
Soon Death will separate me, soul from dust.

Then will my Judgment come from Christ above.
There’s no deceiving Father, Son, and Dove.
The book of deeds I wrote on earth, each page,
will then be seen by all. Perhaps a shove

will send me plunging down—my well earned wage:
eternity spent in a mirrored cage,
cast into the jaws and guts of Hell,
devouring myself to the last age.

Perhaps the Father, knowing me so well,
will, in His mercy, free me from that cell,
guide me home to Heaven, where I will dwell
with Him, kept in His love’s protecting shell.
————————————————
Edits:
S1L2: on those who trust in faith or yield to lust. > who struggle to choose faith instead of lust. > those who sink in doubt and those who trust
S1L3: God’s fields grow weeds of hate and seeds of love. > in God, growing weeds of hate and seeds of love.
S3L4: devouring myself from age to age. > devouring myself to the last age.
S4L3: guide me home to Heaven, with Him to dwell, > guide me home to Heaven, where I will dwell
S4L4: and keep me in His love’s protecting shell. > with Him, kept in His love’s protecting shell.

Hi Glenn,

A few thoughts:

"The rain falls on us all" is a cliche which, in my opinion, is not quite earned/justified by anything different in the lines around it.

"trust in faith or yield to lust" seems like it might be a false equivalence, if it wants to remain consistent with the theology of mercy presented in the fourth stanza. As if the person who trusts in faith would not also ever yield to lusts.

Respectfully, I didn't learn anything new from reading this poem. And I wasn't convinced that the poet learned anything by writing this poem. Nor was I significantly entranced by the language. It seemed, to me, like a case of either 1. unpersuasive theological rhetoric or 2. the real impetus/reason for the writing of the poem was left out.

Take care,
Chelsea

Hi, Chelsea—

Thanks for weighing in. It’s helpful to know how a piece of writing lands with different readers. I appreciate your time and considered responses.

Glenn

Hi, Glenn! Aha, you're toying with Frost's interlocking rubaiyat structure for "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" again....

I don't agree 100% with the narrator's belief system here, which is fine — I can still appreciate a religious poem without necessarily agreeing with its theological thesis. I do, however, need a poem to deliver the sorts of things that poems can, but prose cannot. I don't just mean the skillful use of rhyme and meter, but the creation of a poetic experience, opening out to vivid sensations and possible meanings.

This piece gives me the impression that the narrator is saying pretty much what the poet wanted him to say, with minimal inconvenience posed by the tricky form; that's impressive, but maybe the technical mastery makes things just a bit too straightforward, without leaving much room for discovery or startling insights. As Robert Frost said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

I also wonder who the intended audience is for this. The title suggests familiarity with the Catholic tradition of referring to death, judgment, hell, and heaven as "the Four Last Things," and L1 expects familiarity with Matthew 5:45. But isn't a reader who is already familiar with those prerequisites likely to be even more familiar with the dogmatic concepts mentioned in the poem? So why rehash all this stuff?

Is the narrator trying to convince himself of God's mercy, but can't quite bring himself to believe what he wants to? He seems to be hoping that other semi-believers will be able to relate to his anxiety, and I'm sure some readers will. But those readers who have already either accepted or rejected the Good News (i.e., the idea that God Is Not A Merciless, Power-Tripping Asshole) might not feel that there is much payoff for us in these 16 lines of fear and trembling.

More specific quibbles:

S1: Is lust really the only sin dividing the just from the unjust? A Pass/Fail grading system of mortal sins, which places a single instance of masturbatory relief on the same Hell-earning level as torture and murder, is not my idea of perfect justice, even if it floated St. Thomas Aquinas's high-functioning autistic boat to categorize sins that way.

S2: The narrator claims "my Judgment will come from Christ above," but within two lines of that statement he seems more concerned about the judgments of others: "The book of deeds I wrote on earth, each page, / will then be seen by all." Does the narrator actually fear people's judgments of him more than God's? If so, that's the most interesting thing in this poem, and I'd far rather read more about that than about the less surprising stuff that follows.

Also in S2: Referring to "the Father, Son, and Dove" strikes me as a touch too flippantly irreverent, if the narrator is seriously worried about his odds of ending up in Hell.

S4: In the final line, the afterlife seems awfully late in the game for God to suddenly "keep me in His love’s protecting shell." What does someone already in Heaven need protection from? And where was that same "protecting shell" when it actually would have been helpful, i.e., when the anxious narrator was back on earth, so worried sick "devouring himself" with fear and self-loathing (as evidenced by the poem's existence) that he might as well have already been in Hell long before death?

Final thought (which need not be answered in this poem) — It puzzles me that musings about Heaven and Hell, such as this one, tend to ignore the idea of resurrection completely. If bodies are irrelevant, and matter doesn't matter after death, then what was the point of Easter? Don't most versions of the Final Judgment envision the dead getting bodies again BEFORE going to either Heaven or Hell (or Purgatory, strangely not mentioned among the Four Last Things)?

I hope some of these ramblings are helpful.

Hi Glenn. Any poet wants his work to be taken seriously, no matter how successful or unsuccessful it may turn out to be, and I think Chelsea and Julie have done you proud in that respect. I don't really have anything to add to their comments, except that "Father, Son and Dove" - something of your own coinage? - seems a particularly unhappy rhyme-driven expedient.

I did like the use of the simple language throughout, and some of the cadences, but not the overall approach. (I write as a semi-believer, at best, to use Julie's term - and even that probably overstates the case).

Cheers

David

The mirrored cage strikes me as a strong image of Hell.

That hate would manifest as weeds and love as seeds feels apt. The metaphor falters for me because the poem has the seeds a result of growth.

What Chelsea and Julie said.

Hi, Julie, David, Max, and Hilary—

Julie—I appreciate your detailed and carefully considered critiques. I tried to respond to most of your points to provide some context for my decisions and objectives.

David—I’m sorry if “Father, Son, and Dove” sounded disrespectful to you. I meant it to sound familiar and trusting and to provide a visual referent.

Max—I’m glad you felt the “mirrored cage” image. I originally had “wheat” in place of “seeds” in S1L3, but the internal rhyme was too much to resist.

Hilary—I hope my responses to Chelsea and Julie clarified my thinking.

Thanks again, all for your generous help.

Glenn

Sure, but being able to explain where you were coming from doesn't mean it's successful as a poem, right?

I don't mean to be harsh. I think overtly religious poems are often the most difficult to write well. I attempt it only with great fear and trembling ...

Hi Glenn,

I don't hold any religious beliefs but, to use Julie's words, "I can still appreciate a religious poem without necessarily agreeing with its theological thesis."

Just two thoughts, for what they're worth:
In the last line, I'd prefer protective to protecting.

Secondly, I wondered why you altered the rhyme scheme for the last stanza:
Perhaps the Father, knowing me so well,
will, in His mercy, free me from that cell,
guide me home to Heaven, with Him to dwell,
and keep me in His love’s protecting shell.

I'm not keen on the inversion of "with Him to dwell", especially as you've employed a new word for the 3rd line of each of the other stanzas.

Jayne

Hi, Jayne—

Thanks for sharing your response to my poem. Let me share my thoughts on each of your three points:

1. I chose “protecting” rather than “protective” to emphasize that it is an ongoing action on God’s part rather than simply a quality of the shell or mansion in which the N hopes to dwell.

2. The rhyme scheme is a variation of the rubaiyat form used by Robert Frost in his poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Frost’s poem is in iambic tetrameter and mine is in pentameter. It seems to me to be a form well-suited for eschatological musings. The rhyme scheme in Frost’s poem is AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD. The four rhyming lines in the last stanza signal the end of the meditation.

3. I think you make a good point about the inversion. I fixed it with a revision.

I appreciate your helpful critiques.

Glenn

This isn't working for me, and I love tons of Christian poetry even though I am not and have never been Christian. George Herbert rocks! But Herbert's poems aren't sermons, but the musings and reflections of a flesh-and-blood person who thinks and strives and ponders and believes and doubts, i.e., a human confronting the meaning of life and existence. Your poem doesn't reveal the human being at its heart, it seems to me, and simply paints by numbers.

Hi, Roger—

Thanks for weighing in. I appreciate your time and effort.

Doesn’t the rain also fall on those who don’t struggle to choose faith instead of lust.
This is a weak spot. “Faith” and “lust” are not precisely what I intended. What I wanted to say was that God makes grace available to everyone while they are alive, whether they struggle to know and obey Him or reject Him. I made some adjustments to S1L2-3.

This sounds like you are at death’s door, looking death in the face. But why is it “soon?”
The N is simply remarking that life is short and he should consider the state of his soul, as the title suggests.

I don’t think that people’s deeds are revealed to “all” when they die. Do you?
Yes, I do. See my earlier post #8 to Julie Steiner.

The word “shove” seems forced to me. Who is doing the shoving?
Fair criticism. I think of damnation as something we do to ourselves by choosing to reject God, so the one shoving the N into hell should be the N himself. I will try to find a way to make this clear. You are right that, as it is, it is not clear. Some possible shovers are Christ, an enemy of the N, or the N’s conscience. The N is imagining that he might “perhaps” be shoved into hell, so his own conscience seems to me to be the likeliest shover. Maybe it is best not to clarify this and let the reader decide which shover best fits his or her own beliefs.

”The jaws of Hell” is a cliché, and a metaphor that doesn’t mesh with anything else in the poem.
“The Jaws of Hell” is an image borrowed from medieval morality plays. At the end of such plays, like Everyman, the sinful characters were marched to a huge mouth decorated with painted flames and thrown into it to the delight of the groundlings. I linked it to the image of the sinner trapped in a mirrored cage devouring himself “from age to age” (i.e. “forever”).

God will be merciful because he knows you so well? Sounds a bit boastful.
God knows how hard the N has tried, not always successfully, apparently, to please Him. The N is counting on God’s mercy because, as he has already confessed, his damnation would be “well-earned.”

A shell sounds like a diminutive and restricted area. . . .I don’t think of heaven as a shell, do you? Also I don’t think of heaven as a place where you need protection.
I hoped the reader would notice that heaven and hell are very similar in design. Both are confined spaces. Christ describes heaven as having “many mansions.” The only difference is that in hell, God is absent because He has been rejected, so the damned soul is left to look at himself in the “mirrored cell” for eternity and to devour himself by remembering and regretting his badly lived life. In heaven God’s loving presence allows the saved soul to share the Beatific Vision, including the fallen angels and Satan from whom he is protected by God.

Glenn

Hello!

The first stanza matches the likes of Dante's cruelty in posing every caste, from the pope itself to a low life thief, to the penalties of divinity after death, and in the poem's case, the preceding step of death (rain) falling without distinction on any type of mortal the soul had once led is a direct parallel of Dante's rhetoric. To your merit, it's a faithful and honest depiction of what comes to all of us.

From then on I noticed the fact that the narrator could really care mostly about his own deeds being shown to other mortals instead of god (for some interpretations), but I, already with the prior analysis in mind, instead chose to focus on a somewhat similar pattern I found with the Divine Comedy as a whole.

Firstly, that 'book of deeds' is the accountable evidence of what you have committed in your real life, and instead of being shown to man, it will be shown to god, and based on having insulted eternity, eternal will your punishment be, based on how you insult him. This ties with the verses 10 - 12 in your third stanza in which the mirrored cage could technically reflect Dante's dictum of self responsibility, and a proportionate punishment towards yourself as a mirroring of the insult you committed.

For example of the above, in the 7th Infernal Circle, second section, of Violence, in what I like to call 'Suicide - Forest', those who committed violence upon their body to cause death are bereft of their body by god, and instead turned to trees, forever stagnant, and in a certain way, having a reflective mirror being posed in front of them in which they can endlessly ponder, in their own infernal forest cage, the punishment they receive, much like the narrator of your poem.

'Chè non e giusto aver ciò che'om si toglie.'

- Dante, Inf. Canto XIII, V. 105.

Another example from the Divine comedy could also be found in the 2nd Circle of gluttony, where, as a mirroring of their appetites being so grand but in an opposite light, souls are forced to revel in excrement and filth for the rest of eternity. Once more, another example which can fit, though in an opposite lens, into your verses in which the damned is put in front of a mirror; horrified of his sins and what they brought him, and therefore horrified by himself and the punishment he brought upon himself. In hell, everything is a reflection of you.

Not to mention how "Devouring myself to the last age" could also be a direct fit for the 5th Circle of Rage, in which souls are forced to swim forever in raging waters, literally drowning in their rage, as the narrator here devours himself out of rage for being thrown down to hell.

And of course, if we skip Purgatory, and instead believe that for some divine concession made by god for "Knowing me so well", that he would be benevolent enough to pick you up from hell, the "Guide me home to Heaven, where I will dwell-" would suggest a similar linkage with the idea of Dante and the 'Diritta Via' being the correct path of virtue to take in an upwards vertical manner, guided by Beatrice, his own form of God, towards the abode of where the actual creator lies, true perfection, and his endless wish, as the one of your narrator, to dwell in that non effected paradise.

Your poem is good, and the fact that it lets someone craft such interpretations stresses the blessed subjectivity in it, and its free leasing imagination. Good Job! (I hope this comment made sense :D)

Hi, Alessio—

Thank you for sharing your detailed critique. I did indeed have Dante in mind. The verse form is similar to the terza rima in the Divine Comedy, but with four lines per stanza instead of three to reinforce the idea of the four last things. If the first line of each stanza is removed, it becomes terza rima.

With such a small canvas, I did not try to capture the complex retributive justice developed by Dante for the dozens of different sins. It seems to me that pride, as the mother of sins, is what ultimately leads the damned soul to reject God and to set himself up as an idol to be contemplated and worshipped for eternity. Thus, the mirror (a common allegorical symbol for pride) presents the sinner to himself eternally with all his imperfections. I used only this single Dantesque device to suggest “hell” in S3. Devouring is also a much repeated image in the Inferno to represent remorse (whose Latin root means “to bite back”). I would not presume to try to compete with Dante, il miglior fabbro.

I appreciate your generous comments and am glad you enjoyed the poem.

Glenn