Icon of SS Abramius and Mary, with St Anastasia the Roman, third century martyr also celebrated on 29th October.

My poem is a rather free improvisation on the story. In the Life by St Dmitri of Rostov (it can be consulted here), Mary flees out of an awareness of sinfulness after she has been seduced by a false monk-disciple of her uncle.

The soul, being enormous, cannot fit
this narrow way, even knowing
or at least believing,
or at least thinking
that only beyond or through it
will it find
a space
that is more or less adequate.

I threw myself against the wall,
against a door that is
wide open but
I thought it was too small.

And so I left the little cell
where God walked with my uncle in the cool
of the evening and ran away
to preserve my soul to the ‘big city’
where I walked the streets and was taken
in the arms of this one. And that one.

This enormous soul, still
thrown against the wall.

And my uncle, he
was always with me, weeping,
even a hundred miles away,

because he was in God, knowingly,
and I was in God just because
everything is in God, and that is why
those whose eyes are opened, who see
in God, see everything, and weep
unceasingly.

So my uncle came, looking for me,
presenting himself at the brothel door,
making himself small
and insignificant,
just another
client.

We conversed
that night and our conversation turned
on the enormous pit
that is the longing of the soul and on what
properly corresponds to it.

And so I returned to my uncle’s cell
and I felt like a child that is growing smaller,
a child who is
returning to childhood, to a world
growing ever bigger, an
expanding Universe, Heaven,
seen through a narrow door
a door that the soul can only enter
when it has become
sufficiently
small.