a poem for your sunday

 

                     Hesychía

        Stillness occurs with the shedding of thoughts.

                                        --Saint John Klimakós

Of course the mind is more often a roar,

within whose din one is hard pressed to hear

so much as a single word clearly. Prayer?

Not likely.  Unless you concede the blur

of confused, compelled, competing desire

the mind brings forth in the posture of prayer.

So, I found myself typically torn,

if lately delivered, brow to the floor,

pressing as far as I could into prayer,

pressing beneath or beyond the roar

that had so long served only to wear

away all good intentions, baffling prayer.

Polished hardwood proves its own kind of mirror,

revealing little, but bringing one near

the margin where one hopes to find prayer--

though even one's weeping is mostly obscured 

by the very fact and effect of one's tears,

which, for the time being, must serve.

                

                                                                --Scott Cairns

                                                                      from Philokalia