On Circumcision's evening
The night's orbs bleed
On the compass line
With violence against
Their impetus to fall into one,
The dread inevitable recall
Written before all time.
The air suffused with a force
Gnawing at my bowels
- At our cycle's close -
With my eyes upturned to see
The foreshadow of the final meridian.
There I saw the foreskin of Christ
Burning a hole in the sky,
Around which thousands of angel hosts
Hymn and circumambulate.
The New Year is inaugurated with the feast of the Circumcision of Lord: a purifying wound, a cutting off, a pact made in blood with God. The beginnings of salvation start anew with the first drop of blood shed by Lord, and in such a way the end becomes a beginning. Few things make the cyclical nature of time as obvious as the movement of Christian calendar, everything is repeated and made present again, round each cycle tears still fall on Good Friday, and we stand in suspense at the doors of the Church on Holy Saturday night. Even the circular shape of the foreskin itself recalls this experience, and the accompanying blood presents us with an image of time as a wound: the process of becoming – as opposed to Real Being – always accompanied by pain.
The cyclical experience of time is now often described in its negative and futile aspect, which we can identify with the violent and bloody nature of circumcision, but certainly there is a positive aspect as well. Time is described in our tradition as an image of eternity – here we can see the significance of the foreskin being a cut-off, wounded portion of God – the continual re-presentation of events is then a function of time’s participation in eternity, and in a way, this lifts us out of process into a more stable realm where everything exists in perfect simultaneity. Under this aspect, the repetition of things only increases their power, and this can be experientially grasped if one lives for a few years with a mind properly attuned.
Whether or not the coincidence of this feast and the New Year is an accident of history is a matter of debate, but this has no bearing on this wonderful symbolism, and ultimately, all things are a matter of Providence.
