Sometimes the heart needs educating; 
              the bruise lightens to mauve,
                 and the strange alchemy

        that turns charcoal and sap into
             a raven, reverses itself into
                 a mendicant’s shawl.

        Though I seem a wizened presbyter; 
             dogma hounds me like a halo
                       of hookah smoke.

        My knuckles grow hard as porphyry;
             my monasticism enshrines me
                    in loss. I’m always cold,

        anonymous as the quivering dormouse
          who nightly revisits me, an oracle—
                 inside his mind’s tiny orbit,

        the universe whirls bravely.
           Faith is a wagon drawn
                    by fireflies,

        so there must be a going forth and 
            a going asunder, a blinding of
                        the mind’s eye.

                     (Syria, 376 C.E)