Meetings

[arisbe]

Sophia, did you bless that distant day
When hands were laid upon an Arab's head,
Who covers my head now with brocade stole?

How long I prayed for opening of the heart
Until able to open it to him
Or rather to the One for Whom he stands.

Where were you, Lady then to me unknown
Save as name and image for long years?

Dear Wisdom, I have waited all my life
For something hard as stone to melt to flesh
That I, who ever strove, might yet be saved.

Now does some molecule of oil remain
Hallowed by him who blessed the sacred dance
To touch the third eye of my sleeping soul?

It shall be good to think it did some day,
Calling you to me from primal wood
Of granite alp, and grace through you to me,

A new chrismation poured upon this head,
That my lips too might open up in praise
Of mystery beyond all reckoning.

Mulberry Street

The dreaded, longed for ecstasy delays
With Lady Wisdom clad in Saxon garb.
As this Italian speaks of daily life

I stand a man among a human crowd,
And not the best of these, the truth to tell.

Sophia, the Eternal Feminine
Is but one aspect of your manifold,
And Beauty only one of her divergent forms.

Neither do you yourself exhaust the Mind
To be embodied here through word
Sung over bread and wine into my own
Insensate body past all ecstasy,

I myself to be embodiment
Of even more than ever I beheld
Gyring in the clocktower's shadowed night,
Heard thundered from the Philharmonic stage:

Stillness alone can hold this mighty dance,
Silence, the symphony of time and space.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


© 2001 by F.P. Purcell; all rights reserved.

Comments

[weret-hekau.livejournal.com]

Those are marvelous! Your words fill me with delight. Would that I had the talent to worship on paper.

Thank you

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

There is a related text here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/arisbe/41719.html

Re: Thank you

[weret-hekau.livejournal.com]

I love poetry.

Re: Thank you

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

So do I. I am glad mine communicates to you.

[rengal.livejournal.com]

I am moved. How glad I am that you shared these!

Thank you very much

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

They are fairly Byzantine, too.

(Are you Melkite, by the way? Ruthenian?)

Re: Thank you very much

[rengal.livejournal.com]

"They are fairly Byzantine, too."
I kinda' thought so. :)

Ruthenian. Although I am ethnically, that is the right description of my parish family. When I was in D.C. looking at grad school I checked out the closest church for me (which happens to be a monestary) and they had all English liturgies. Intersting.