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.