Akathistos

Akathistos

Antiquity
plundered the hoards
of half-remembered tongues,
piling paradox
on teetering
paradox
until reason tottered.

Such did not
comprehend you who
encompassed one greater
than the all.

These ecstatic singers sleep
in golden cities now
powder for the winds,
content they had
aspired to gaze level-
eyed into the
face of God:
their failure is their glory.

To what shall we
liken you, or
with what words shall we,
in our teeming generations,
compare you?
We whose lips have lost
their innocence?

Fish out of God’s river
with no memory of the shoal,
we gasp in alien air.
Alien also to each other.
Well-spring of compassion,
be also
Our Mother.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application