When You did awesome things for which we did not look,
You came down,
The mountains shook at Your presence.
For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.

~ Isaiah 64:3-4

The saying from my previous post forms the context for the following poem. It is easy to forget sometimes that the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are not just wise proverbs but real stories of real people. Wondering what it must have been like for Abbess Sarah to live those sixty years at the bank of that river inspired me to write this:

 

Sixty years at the bank of this river,

twenty-one-thousand, nine-hundred days

and nights and dawns and dusks—my eyes

have never seen such beauty.

Every morning light-reflecting water flows

from my eyes and shines and glimmers

and dances with every breath I take,

heaving each heartbeat half-breathless.

As the peaceful river down below

ever holds my visage in its gaze,

yet I will not give chance to fates

of Narcissuses within me.

And so I look to beauty above

that no eye has seen nor can see,

and the peaceful river flows, its waves

of righteousness within me.

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