Almost midnight,
when my shift ends…
and in walks a thief
at this dark hour.
But I’m no prophet,
no vessel,
though I speak with a seraph
every night at this station,
and it beats its blinding wings…
each eye gazing at lowly me.
{This poem is based on a prompt from the poetry community dVerse:
Create a 44 word poem (called a quadrille) using the word “eye”.}
The crowd stared at the naked young man, at the heart beating outside his skin, and at the well behind him, from which he had been extracted by the elders. Twenty years ago, when he’d gone missing, an inhuman singing began here at the well at the center of the village. A chanting in the night.
The pastry chef, who was awake at odd hours preparing his sweets, heard it first and woke his wife. She told the neighbors, and soon everyone was listening in the dark, losing sleep.
By God’s grace, a small hunting party returned from the woods with news of demons–demons with hearts beating outside their scaly chests, singing a cryptic but pertinent riddle for the discerning:
Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?
{This was inspired by a prompt from Sanaa at dVerse for Prosery on May 10, 2021. Unfortunately, I’m much too late to join in, but I wanted to credit the source of the prompt. Prosery is a regular feature at dVerse that requires participants to create a piece of flash fiction of 144 words or less, using a line of poetry that is provided. In this case, the line is from “Heartbeat” by Rainer Maria Rilke. The line: “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?“ must be unaltered and included in the total word count.}
You delight in tales,
not history or achievements,
in parables ancient and abstract.
Your ways are bloodless.
Fearing nothing but God
and your own human heart,
you are no mere jester,
no sophisticated mime,
or vulgar clown.
The face of a fool is intimate,
not subtle, not philosophical.
You are gifted, though, and deft
at unraveling mystery and depth,
at exchanging rhetoric for art.
{This poem was inspired by the dVerse prompt which asks us to:
Write a poem using the word clown or a word – real or created – with clown as the root.
I am not at all a fan of clowns. I find them quite frightening.
Some poets decided to go the horror route with this prompt. Some went political. (Clowns and politicians just go hand in hand don’t they?)
Mine went a different direction. The Fool fits loosely under the clown category. I have always been intrigued by the archetype of the Fool, and in particular the Holy Fool.
There are many representations of the Fool throughout literature. Shakespeare’s plays feature these types of characters. There’s a Fool card in the tarot. And of course there were many saints who were honored with the title within the Eastern Orthodox Church. (In the Western Church we have St. Francis of Assisi as an example.)
The Holy Fool was known to do outrageous (and occasionally humorous) acts. Many had colorful or controversial pasts.
The concept of the Holy Fool is based, in part, on scriptures such as:
God chooses “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
Here are a two great reads on the subject:
The Holy Fool (at Image Journal)
St. Simeon the Holy Fool (at Ship of Fools)
There are so many manifestations of the Fool. It’s a fascinating subject.}
Sophie’s Shelves 