The Chains of Gerasa / Fr. Gabriel Rochelle
I never saw the falcon rise where he floating turns
To pierce his falcon eyes through clouded skies. My
Soul, lost in the ringing hollow granite caverns
Sleeps the stupor of reason in the cool of tombs
Where, lost, it is amber eluding my eye. Tombs
Cut with wild tiger claws of iron in the side
The low-rising, steep-climbing side
Of the mountain which Sisyphus once climbed
And climbed once more. O God I abhor
The Orestean fate which, like the long shadow
My wild child body could not lose, outrun
In midday sun, overtook me, engulfed me about
With never a shout of warning; no tocsin (alarm) great or small
Sounded through it all. Like Persian cat, majestic,
Silently placing one foot before the other, that fate
That archetypal fate that waited for me, crept in
Winning my beginning. If Achilles had his uncertain heel
I, too, must be real. No silver key around to turn
And open the lock that binds me to my stone.
No escape. Except, perhaps, to embrace the stone
And watch the falcon rising, rising all alone,
Until his shadow crosses the round vortex mouth
Of the caverns and the damp tombs where I,
Everyone, Gerasene demoniac, shake seething, expecting
Anyone, someone, to heal or seal the widening gap
Twixt body, mind, and soul… Expecting.
The Chains of Gerasa: Copyright 2023 by Fr Gabriel Rochelle. All rights reserved.
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