Deserted
by James Harpur
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 sea
Of Marmara, the reek of fish and salt.
And rock? Her skin on which I freely roved
That sent me as an exile to this place
Of desert, sky, and rock, a paradise
Until a daydream of her gasping love
Propels me from my cave, my cell,
Into a glittering burning blue-skied hell.
