Sebastian Koga

now I know

Twilight:

the day is brought to the gallows

in a flash of fever.

On the road to Jericho,

flowers of blood caked

on my temple,

on my chest.

You pass

with a satchel of light,

a desert bladder full of dew.

Tomorrow,

startled from sleep,

the guillotine of morning

rolls the heads

of the primrose

and the moonflower.

What of my love for you?

Silence into silence.

Yoked to your little name,

Begotten of the Father

before all ages.

Liturgy of the hours

at the first hour

I disembark like Noah from the ark

the amniotic waters of morning

recede from city blocks

the dove returns with

coffee and bread

at the third hour

horses gallop across the screen

my work is interrupted

by builders of marble

memorials the clean heart

looks small in the mirror

at the sixth hour

the noon demons

pour wine into the sponge

cake of the blemished body

a saltpeter sky falls

over the Cross

at the ninth hour

I return to the

cavern of the soul —

sleep blows cold into

the penthouses of Babel

from the matins of memory

the breviary of the living

opens to the last page

Lord I have cried unto you,

Hear me!

Verbum caro factum est

There is a word imprinted in my soul

Which brings the lost ships back to shore

And weaves a track through foggy woods,

And opens, with a whisper, Heaven’s door.

There is a word, not love nor money, no—

An echo through the cave within my chest,

A plainchant that can make the waters still,

A sigh through which both life and death find rest.

There is a word, for which there are no words,

That pours silence over tortured sleep,

Uncasts the shadows from the rage of love

And gives me faith to stay, and then to leap.

There is a word, I hold inside until I see

The green wheat blades above the snow,

Unfletch the arrow,

Unstring the bow,

Unflesh the body,

and in its silence glow.

Sebastian Koga is a Romanian neurosurgeon and poet currently working in New Orleans. He completed a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and serves as a director of the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK.