Alice
O. Howell
PATMOS: The Monastery of St.
John
We touch the
ikons
secretly in the slanting haze
standing among the
whispers
others left
images one kisses
teach one to
love life
we search the faint, strained faces
of Nicholas,
Mary and John,
their severity and grandeur
by the scent of beeswax
and myrrh,
the old worked silver of the frames
pewtered by time
and prayer
faces of dignity, pity, faces of pride
in
sorrow
the lamps are hung on
triple brass chains
hushed
before the many-imaged screen,
almost a sacred
chessboard
perpendicular to chance
withered flowers
in
crevices tuck away a gratitude
for something past
a fly at the
window
buzzes at the now
that screen
separates the
living somehow
from life
and either ventricle, the
secular
beats for the sacred, and the sacred
beats for the
commonplace
it is a great mystery
this devotion
dances
the quintessence of crimson;
this chapel is like an
enclosed heart
pulsing for the world
outside is the distant
fragrance of the sea
and blue-lit spaces,
beauty cobbled up and
down
white pierced by cypresses
death struck down by daily
suns
and calendars of faith requited
we climb
Patmos
the women smile
the cocks crow
the donkeys
bray
the old men ride astride wooden chairs, smoking.
I love your
breathing
and the soft sound of your shoes
on the rippling stone
steps
we climb
up that honeycomb of cornered whites
to
the roof and belfry
to where no events are
troubled by
explanations
standing in tears
at the parapets of
reason
at this blue edge of time
trying to explain
things
get blown away, blown away
to risk the flesh
to purity, to
light!
tears with no explanations
shatter into splinters of
air
all clarity and no defenses
the chapel beats below the
feet
like a reminding heart,
it takes in the spectrum of
breath
to feed its inner sun
if I opened your
body
like the body of the world
it would have a red heart,
also
full of ikons I could kiss
together we go down again to
the white chapel,
we enter like foreign substances
into the
auricles of faith.
a.o.howell
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