More on: paradise

—————–after a painting by John Henry Twachtman Like a gate to Paradise, illumined as how fluttering angels might appear, the meadow seems misty while at the same time impossibly bright. But there looks to be hardly any way into such purity of color, through the many layers of lavender and yellow. And yet a few…

Where the Lord lives in heaven, is he lonely? Does our Father walk his marble floors without the company of anyone righteous? Who alone is venerable enough to keep the Lord company? My voice is small, yet I call to your house, Lord. Does the wind enter your chambers and rooms, cold and empty? Where…

Prayer means shedding of thoughts. ——————–—Evagrius Ponticus My heaven is a stripping of the mind. I make this glittering desert be a desert The burning rock, rock, blue sky just sky Until they are pristine; but then I find The desert leads me to its opposite Noise-vomiting Constantinople, And sky reminds me of the boundless…

The Eighth Day after Creation Then what a falling-off there was, unruly man, a violent God— when earth gave way, and rocks sprang up, volcanoes poured their fire down and mountains rose with jagged crags to form a world outside the plot. Though here today among the glaciered peaks pine stems still grow straight up…

–after Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia In the garden, all the apples have returned to us, dangling gold leaf shiny from the trees, and under their bowers we walk, our drowsy feet crushing the flowers, carnations, pinks, violas, dahlias— All of our dead have returned to us, their faces wrinkled with the labor of the…

A chain of blue-white chips mimics waves pleating around Christ’s body. On the western wall, another scene of owl-eyed saints drawing light unlike us. Despite centuries of votive smoke, the shining ranks of prophets gesture, elegant as sommeliers, toward mosaic scrolls and would have you consider the honeycombed geometry of paradise—dome, arch, and column— it’s…