Patmos

by Bruce Bond

Published 30 May 2021
The dead are never far from the living in Patmos, the end is always nigh, and the cultural symptoms of denial and reconciliation, unresolved shame and loneliness, remain just beneath the surface: ""It is how, these many / years, we survived. In our rooms, alone, at the end of time."" In this book-length poetic sequence, Bruce Bond explores the psychology of endings as a living presence that haunts our spiritual, moral, and ecological imaginations, elevates its summons, and draws us to question its significance. The horrors and glories in the revelations of John of Patmos provide a lens into a wound, a crisis of values, a longing to heal a visionary brokenness that is fundamentally solitary and yet contemporary, written against a door that will not open.