The Lifted Veil

Summary for The Lifted Veil, by John Berutti

Poems written between the years 1996 and 2003 by John Berutti, Ph.D., retired teacher of anthropology and lifelong cattle rancher. Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, the poems comprise a dark and challenging spiritual journey of discovery, recognition, and renewal; they chronicle the poet's personal encounter with death through two major open-heart surgeries, in which the poet died clinically and now recalls his subjective experience of those events. Berutti explores the nature of relationships, the political world, and ultimately the deep roots of life through the spiritual lens developed in the poet's encounter with death and the renewal of his faith.
The volume is arranged into four sections encompassing the dark journey into the land of death and the painful and hazardous return, moving out to an ever expanding examination of the self and the larger world. The first section opens with a dedicatory poem to John's wife Susan, a beautiful tribute to a profound and life-giving love, a poem which introduces and summarizes the whole. The poem that follows and initiates the journey constitutes a warning reminiscent of Greek drama--the fearful envoy from the darker side of the other world, the "Hood in the Tree," pronounces his chilling and typically enigmatic invitation: "Are you ready? ... ready to be rendered worthy /to disjoin the padlock of life?" When the protagonist responds in the negative, the "hood," implacable and unmoved, simply replies "I'll be back."
Following immediately upon the visit from the "hood," the descent to the valley of the shadow begins in earnest, with "A Visit to Purgatory" and other poems chronicling the poet's encounters with death through his surgery. And in the midst of all these frightening visions comes an envoy of life to match and counter the envoy of death. In the beautiful poem "Wendell," a beloved horse, playful and charming, enters the vision and carries the protagonist back to the world of the living:
Astride, we plunged toward the light, a burst away
from the darkness, leaving surprised shadows
to exclaim, ponder.

The return to the world of the living is painful; the encounter with death is problematic and impossible to assimilate; it radically re-orders values. The final poem in this initial section concludes with an image reminiscent of baptism: "Water, the sweet elixir of life, swallowed."
The following two divisions of the book constitute a re-examination of the world in light of the author's "Trip to Purgatory." The scrutiny is unsparing, and most unsparing of all with the author's own past follies. He does not distance himself from the "sinners" of our common scene but examines all with an eye which may be jaundiced but is also inclusive and compassionate, viewing especially his own failings with an almost amazed respect and gratitude for God's infinite mercy, although the workings of divine will are often dark and almost always inscrutable.
Part Two of this collection is primarily composed of personal sketches and portraits. It opens with a pair of rather surreal visions. "Don't Laugh at the Wizard" offers a bizarre, almost-comic scene: a protagonist stumbles his way up a "ladder of stars" which comes from he knows not where and leads toward a possibly sublime goal which he cannot see clearly but trusts is there. If "Don't Laugh at the Wizard" is a semi-comic vision of the half-sensed but never clearly seen cosmic goal of one who climbs "singing a discordant night-song," then "The Slow Winding Down" presents the temporal goals of this world, the illusory and ungraspable vision of a false gold ring on an endless merry-go-round.
Some of Berutti's most moving and often disturbing poems are his portraits of individuals. "My Mama's Gone" combines the painful clear-sightedness and compassion characteristic of Berutti's best poems, and ends with a beautiful image: the woman, tormented by age and hu