You meet the time when
in your hand rests that trinket,
once keeper of such joy, such
covetousness, and you wonder
where the time has gone.You gaze into the elephant’s eye
far above your head, wrinkles
spiral into darkness, a vastness
you cannot seem to comprehend.You bend your head to survey
the bamboo birdcage,
weathered and brittle, pushing
aside what keeps you from the latch,
not quite able to reach.Rest your fingers gently on the
suckling’s ribcage, a mere week
of breath rising to the moon,
releasing, no woe yet known,
a single whole you become one.
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Author’s note:
My entry on the fourth logion of the Gospel of Thomas seems to return to breath and birdcages.
If you would like to read my earlier poems on my study of the Gospel of Thomas, here are the links to those poems:
Breath/3
Sovereignty/2
Twin/1
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Logion 4 as translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James. M. Robinson at the Gnostic Library Society:
(4) Jesus says:
(1) “The person old in his days will not hesitate to ask a child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live.
(2) For many who are first will become last, (3) and they will become a single one.”