Illumination
By Niall Twohig
An illuminated page from The Book of Kells
Consider the monk,
cloistered in his drab Ionian cell,
grey is the sky
salt on the air
and seagull song in his ear.
Drab Iona—
a canvas, like the blank page
before him.
Holding quill,
he remembers
his young hand:
Stroking curlicue vines
Da called St. Patrick’s Staff.
Daisy chains
knotted by hands
his hand neared but never touched.
And the hedge, where his hand,
tickled by a thousand fairy hands,
sought its hidden heart.
He left green
flowering parts
for wilderness,
but its patterns are here,
twirling and twisting
vibrating in his mind
in his hand,
in the skeletal Nautilus
dug from sand.
Thought arrives
as prayer:
The drabness must be
for the patterns to appear
in full glory.
And their full glory
illuminates the word
in this dark age
when words are empty things
hollow as a death’s head.
Inglorious hand
moved by glorious patterns
allows the Word
to flower
into its fullness again.
Gloria,
Gloria,
In infirmus
Deo!