Djuna Barnes ‘Transfiguration’ 1938

Transfiguration 

Djuna Barnes 

 

The prophet digs with iron hands

Into the shifting desert sands.

 

The insect back to larva goes;

Struck to seed the climbing rose.

 

To Moses’ empty gorge, like smoke

Rush inward all the words he spoke.

 

The knife of Cain lifts from the thrust;

Abel rises from the dust.

 

Pilate cannot find his tongue;

Bare the tree where Judas hung.

 

Lucifer roars up from earth;

Down falls Christ into his death.

 

To Adam back the rib is plied,

A creature weeps within his side.

 

Eden’s reach is thick and green;

The forest blows, no beast is seen.

 

The unchained sun, in raging thirst,

Feeds the last day to the first. 

 

Orig publ ‘’London Bulletin’ No 3 (1938) revised and reprinted in ’Surrealist Poetry in English’ ed E B Germain, Penguin (1978) p.156