Once there was only desert.
Not a tree lifted its head.
Not a rock cut water.

Then somehow a garden.
God walked in it.
The only place to find Him.

You found them both
at the same time,
God and the garden.

Then you found
a desert
of your own making.

God was somewhere
in that desert, too,
inside another garden.

The old ways were dying on the vine.
Rome was dying like an ox half slaughtered.
To the east the Sassanids were at the door.
To the north the Germans bastardized her.
Forests amuck with tribes, roads with migrants.
There was drought and famine and plague.
What else could they do but tighten their grip
and let the Empire slip between their fingers?

They told my parents to sacrifice in the name
of Roman gods, in the name of the sons of Decius.
They thought, if the whole world prays together
on Rome’s behalf, perhaps she will not die.
Still emperors dropt like olives shook loose.
Stricken with plague. Murdered by men.
Silver became worthless. We bartered in crops.
Ours was a house of plenty, we did not want.

But I had heart-searchings. I went from abbot
to abbot like a prudent bee collecting the honey
of God’s plan, trying to understand why
He sets the world on fire from time to time. 
It wasn’t until one day, in the Lord’s House,
Matthew was being read, when Christ said
If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast
and thou shalt have the treasures of heaven.

I’d heard it many times before, but that day—
that day, as if it were read on my account,
He whispered it softly to me, to my heart.
Be emptied that you may be full. And I did. I did!
I gave everything away, all my parents had left.
And O! how quickly the world was changed,
how prosperous my neighbors, my village, became.
As fecund as the valley after akhet.

What I gave to the land, the land gave back.
It was not long after, a thought impressed in me
like a seed that would sprout uncountable limbs.
What else, if I would be perfect, was left in me
unchanged into treasure? It must be the world
was not a chest to be opened but an alchemy
transmuting the innermost self outwardly.
So I went to the desert to weigh my heart.

Hold perfectly still
and you will see the desert fill
with the space between space.

You will notice the date tree
that you are, and dates
that propagate your branches.

You will inspect each one
with sympathy and find
in truth, you are a date tree.

I took refuge in the words of Christ.
It was not hard, when the devil
first appeared, to guard against
his vice, for I was an upright man.

I did not anoint myself in oils
like the other hermits. I slept easy
on a rush mat. My meals were bread
and water every third day.

When he came as a dragon offering glory,
as a woman offering her flesh, even
as my sister begging for her inheritance,
each time I turned him away.

And when I thought the worst was done
he took the shape of a black boy
dressed as a shepherd’s son
walking between the tombs.

Woe unto you, I said, guileful one.
If any of your forms had power
over me it would’ve sufficed
if only one of you had come.

He laughed and spoke
with the same voice as I had had
when I was a child. He said
What makes you think we came

as if we were not always here?
As if the source of that voice
that saves you now is not also
the source of the ones you fear?

At this I lunged forward
grabbing at the darkness,
and there were hosts of beasts
lurking wild and savage

that siffled and brayed
and stretched their paws,
their ongles, that rent my body
on their horns and claws.

Anon a fellow hermit came
bringing bread and company
who, stopping at the doorway
to my tomb, heard my anguish.

He rushed inside and found me
crippled and disturned 
on the cold of the floor.
My strength, my senses, gone.

Our Antony was in such a state,
purpled by his own hand,
talking with himself as if
there were many of him.

The desert dreams of a great flood.
It watches the sky for its coming,
dreaming of mud and the end of thirst.

Your bronze horizon at noon is hypnagogic
O Valley of Scetis, O Arcadian wastes!
Land that Moses left, that Origen restored.

Even your hope is ruinous.
You worship the old gods, the oldest god
with a mindless, golemite servitude.

You do violence to the wind that scorns you.
Your banded ridges and vales scarred in salt.
Your bleached innards of ineffectual sacrifice.

Who crawls into your naked catacombs
will have the same feverish dreams
of utopia as the Israelites, as Jesu had!

He shroudeth Himself not in mysterious garbs.
For thy teacher’s sake thou wert mistaken on this.
Woe unto them, and woe unto those led astray!
He chooseth not His appointed time to make
a covenant with thee. It arrives like the sun.
It compacts with thee at all hours of the day.
If thou dost not greet it, dost not offer it up
thy heart, will it not be taken from the hip?
Woe unto him who does not offer it.
                                       Leave me to it, hermit.

Knowst thou Jacob, of the line of Abrahim?
He tangled with El. Jacob who El protected
strove with him till the break of day. Verily
it was the same day that Jacob sent his family
and all that he hath over the ford at Jabbok.
Knowst thou the one? It cleaves Gilead in twain.
It drains naught but treachery and Ammorite blood.
He crossed it fleeing Haran, fearing his own brother,
Esau, who plotted his murder. Knowst thou the tale?
Then believest Jacob strove with El that day.
                                        Not I, hermit. Not I.

Was this metaphor? Thou hast strove with Him.
Was He like some burning bush to thee? Didst thou
smell the sweet scent of tinder o’er the range?
Wast thou waiting for the earthly tides to fall
and remembered not the ford at which a man
loseth himself? Verily I say to thee that too is El.
Or dost thou look upon a lizard and a scorpion—
I know thou hast seen them high in the mountains
fighting at dusk, as I have—dost thou look at them
and think their struggle metaphoric? I say unto thee
God does not wear such expensive garments.
                                       You speak true, hermit.

My belly is full, my mind awake.
I have chewed on the fat of memory.
I have drunk from the bowl of occurrence.

In the burnished air vultures ride higher
as I inhale, lower as my breath departs.
My heartbeat is as the mountains are.

The second time I went into the desert
I was there twenty years, alone.
I found a Roman fort in the mountains
so long deserted it was full of creeping things
and crossed over to it and dwelt there
within myself till there remained nothing
but God—and I had discerned His heart.

Sometimes it was hunger alone.
I could sit for days and learn of nothing
but hunger, how it stirs a wakeful heart.
How it pays attention to what’s there.
How it becomes not unlike the things
it desires, and fills up even the desert
with its desires, stretching over mountains.

Sometimes it was the loneliness of mountains.
Twenty years is a long time to be alone.
And though the appearance of the desert
does not alter, the longing in my heart
altered it into a thousand thousand things.
And what was, and what was not there
was a difference that diminished to nothing.

How strange, then, when we discern things
we learn, at the same time, what’s there
that’s similar to all, that cannot exist alone.
This, I decided, must be God’s heart.
When I emptied myself into nothing
my devotion became as the mountains,
my fasting the fasting of the desert.

I was the things that were there to behold.
What was God the mountains alone knew.
I was nothing else, a desert in the heart.

God is the God of fecundity.
He splits open the desert,
draws manna from the wounds.

I have sucked out water
from the baked floor
to remind myself of water.

I was not thirsty
but offered myself willingly
to the feeling of thirst.

God asked, Do you know
for what it is you thirst?
I plucked this fruit and was full.

God is in the world. All is good.
In all I know or ever could
his harbingers sing Alleluia!
What is understood is understood.

Twenty years of solitude to learn
what some men often earn
in a year’s hardship, or in a day’s.
Now I learn it every day, and unlearn.

Does the apostle not say, Die daily
that you riseth again continually?
So God who is all things died
to prove the work is done plainly.

So I descended the mountains
and found the blood of the Christian
spilt by lions in the games, crucified
in the name of Caesar Diocletian.

And I cried to them in Alexandria, Die well,
blameless and accusing, that they may tell
by your deaths who they themselves are.
Let them know upon what their hearts dwell.

God is living, and God has died.
One performs Him, one casts Him aside.
Even the casting aside is fulfillment.
He is all, and in all—Abide! Abide!