Ascetic Feats are Not Sainthood
after Jack Gilbert's 'The
Abnormal is Not Courage'
The Stylites stood
on poles for thirty, forty years
Flagellati
scourging themselves with ropes. Bloody and merciless.
A magnitude of
heroism, of self-denial that allows me no peace.
This poem would
lessen their feats. Question
The piety. Say it's
not beatitude, not at it's best.
They were
impossible, and too strife-driven. Too unique.
“Whose
feet were they washing in the desert”
Asks dear Basil. It
is too near the masochist's mind,
the thrill of
extremity. The adrenaline.
Not Macarius' monks
with no clothes or food in the desert,
but Macrina,
tending the bodies of the broken poor.
Not Joseph the
Lidless, But the Seven Sleepers.
Not
the termini, but
the via media.
Humility
as reckoning oneself as worth something,
Not nothing. Frail, but not useless. Ugly, but not unlovable.
The modesty of moderation. The bravery of
non-description. It is the heroines of Victorian Literature,
not of Greek War-ballads. The hand shaken, not squeezed.
Togetherness.
Not the exception.
The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.