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NOTHING BUT A FACE
I know, Lord, that just as
Facebook is a bottomless pit,
so too
is prayer, and so
I hang about the edges
since I do not want to lose
that little person, smiling
shyly in space
and time,
enjoying his own
small satisfactions -
the person who is not
hypostatic.
For the person may well be
a colourful character,
may be entertaining
or entertained - the hypostasis,
though,
is an eternal form.
Happy the person who -
maybe entertaining and even
entertained - is the face,
the appearance, the
manifestation
of an eternal form,
a hypostasis, but the form
is an abyss
and prayer
enters that enormity.
Lord, how terrible is this place
where there is no space,
nor time,
nor purchase, and where the face,
the person, has to give way
to the hypostasis.
Lord, I remember,
many years ago, when I
was new to this game,
likening
prayer to a scouring pad,
rubbing away,
keeping the pots
spick and span - I never thought
I was rubbing them out
and even less
of rubbing out a face
- though I already had
some consciousness
of entering an abyss.
Lord, You went in
before me,
in Gethsemane - You said
'Let this cup pass from Me ...'
Your prayer
wasn't what You asked for
(You didn't get that) - Your prayer
was the cup.
It isn't my will that counts
here in this dreadful place
but Yours -
this dreadful place
I call an abyss, but which is also
a garden, also
Paradise.
Lord, surely You understand
why I do not pray,
hoping, as I do, that I,
like the thief on the cross,
might get away
with only a word, spoken
at just the right time -
and so I can continue
my life of crime
enjoying what I think
I am, and so
being (being being nothing
if not eternal)
nothing but a face.