“The Lindisfarne Gospels: St. John”

In the beginning your fathers’ fathers kidnapped heaven
And held it for ransom. Open the book,
Smell the vellum, touch the ink from the east, look
Into the labyrinthine Latin, imagine
Walking through its knotted vines and then
Emerging into a pair of eyes which look
Into you and speak in stern words: you took
Something that will later take you; for when
You stole this book from cloisters young,
You first exchanged it for coins and stones,
But your children’s children took it back again,
Annotated its margins in their vulgar tongue,
Blessed with it their saints’ and martyrs’ bones,
Prayed someday the maze might let them in.

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The featured image is a detail from “John the Evangelist” from the Lindisfarne Gospels (c. 715) and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.