On Mount Athos

A ladder hangs down the cliff face to a hermitage high on a sea-gazing rock;
Monks have clambered down these rickety steps for millennia,
Renouncing the world to praise God,
Lowering baskets on pulleys for the alms of passing fishermen.

On these cliff paths you cannot free yourself,
Unless you face the worst evils within
And see through them.
Long shadows of cypress trees trammel the hill
And ravens gyre overhead.

This is the Garden of the Virgin:
Chestnut and fir and holly oak,
Monasteries with terraced gardens, olive groves and vineyards,
Thirteen days behind the rest of the world.

Read, if you can, the chrysobuls of time.
Here you must transfigure the passions
To recover the essence,
The truth of yourself and the world.

Three times the monk circumambulates the courtyard,
Striking the semantron on his shoulder,
Summoning the faithful into the church’s ark.

To be vigilant is all,
To practise the goldsmith’s attention,
The iconographer’s love.
A narrow path above the sea,
A bridge of prickly pears and purple irises,
The air nectar-sweet, the cliffs broom-yellow,
Sparrows flitting in the olive groves...
This is your way.

Wake and pray;
Thereby engage the world,
Putting one foot before the other, time and time again,
Onward into liturgy, service and grace.
And, after all,
All you are doing
Is walking.