Transubstantiation

by Jocelyn Simms

We wrought God
in our image.
A god of hate, nourished
with paranoia.

Invoked a trinity in the name

of cruelty
and of shame
and of greed.

Orchestrated an agenda:

to burn the people
blast the city
detonate the ocean floor
encircle earth in a rim of fire.

Despair has drawn
you here, to the chapel
at dusk.

the petrified hare hides from the howling dogs

the soldier's boot crushes the pilgrim's face

children flee from the Angel of Death

Judge's Comments - Roger Elkin

Italicised lines also underpin the burden of meaning in this fine poem, which could almost be read as an extension of the doubts intuited in the final question of Chronicle. The Transubstantiation of the title is the spiritual change concomitant with a reverse Creation, that of God in man's image: a God-man who de-creates, destroys and brings things to annihilation, and whose Holy Trinity has become "cruelty", "shame" and "greed". There is an implicit cross-referencing to the codename "Trinity" that Oppenheimer gave to his atomic bomb testing station. In the face of an "agenda" of destruction, the only recourse is "to the chapel / at dusk". And yet, the poem warns, this will be no relief: it is "dusk", the dusk of mankind. Like Chronicle there is no specific location, time, or person; and like Chronicle the writing is spare, its two adjectives - "petrified", "howling" - serving in the final italicised lines to emphasise the enormity of the horrors that mankind in his aspiration to out-God God has unleashed. Yet these final lines - a further trinity - remind us via the mention of hunting hounds, pilgrims and the Angel of Death that the transubstantiating change and man's destructive character have a long evolution.