Wisdom from a Gnostic Sage
In inky shadows sages scratched,
Got drunk on mythic wines.
Philosophies were sometimes hatched
From patterns in the signs.
Yet three, drawn on by astral light,
With minds as clear as day,
Traversed the sands to catch a sight
Of Truth in swaddled clay.
Though man-proportioned, Christos shrinks
Into His mother’s robe:
Our God kenotic made.
Mary, maid and mother – both –
Conceives divinity.
(Fire, we’re told, does not consume
Her pure virginity).
You who tread on holy ground
Put on simplicity.
If He is to be born, God needs
All your complicity.
As swift as eye-of-reason’s blink
Consent, in waiting, parted lips.
As quick as pulse could leap to beat
Of wing, her cry let fly to air
Where word met Word. Thunder unrolled –
Salvation’s sentence in pursuit
Of spirit’s lightning dart to soul
Pre-hushed. Her heart, inviolate still,
Now known, knew all. So All the valley
Filled, and pure Love’s river swelled,
Then brimmed to shed its tide on time.
Phillip Medhurst