Ascension

Stretching Himself as if again,
          through downpress of dust
                    upward, soil giving way
to thread of white, that reaches
          for daylight, to open as green
                    leaf that it is...
Can Ascension
          not have been
                    arduous, almost
as the return
          from Sheol, and
                    back through the tomb
into breath?
          Matter reanimate
                    now must relinquish
itself, its
          human cells,
                    molecules, five
senses, linear
          vision endured
                    as Man--
the sole
          all-encompassing gaze
                    resumed now,
Eye of Eternity.
          Relinquished, earth's
                    broken Eden.
Expulsion,
          liberation,
                    last
self-enjoined task
          of Incarnation.
                    He again
Fathering Himself.
          Seed-case
                    splitting,
He again
          Mothering His birth:
                    torture and bliss.

-- Denise Levertov (1923-1997), English/American poet, from Evening Train, 1992, in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, 2013


Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Ascension of Christ, 1636