‘The Irish Healer’

 

You have come upon the South

Near to dying, in the turgid

Billowing blackness.  Many

Have already been taken –

A falling column crushed the skull

Of that one; an enemy

Used the jagged length of a statue

Broken to impale another;

Unseen disease swept away

Scores of others.  Those left with breath

And flowing blood lie unmoving

On the ground, skin stuck to bone,

Sweat-soaked hair matted on the head,

Amid broken glass and squalor,

Felled trees and lightning-scorched houses.

The wild beasts tear us without pity.

 

A sweet light comes with you,

St Columba.  It gently lifts us,

Gives us strength to move.  We look closer;

It shines from your peaceful face,

From your hands, the hands you are reaching

Towards us with.  Bright angels

By the hundreds are appearing,

Your fellow-workers in the worship

Of the One God in love and purity.

You saw and spoke with some of them

Before you had put aside your flesh

At death.  They have come at your earnest

Prayer to the All-Holy Trinity.

The firm touch of any of those

Sacred hands as you fan out

Amongst us revives our

Mortal frames.  The dead are given

Back to us alive.  The souls

Of all grow joyous.  Homes, simple

Or stately, re-form.  Toppled trees

Yield new leaves; the coyote

And the cottonmouth leave meekly

For their dens.  The choking darkness

Recedes.  The sun is seen again,

And with him the stars and moon.

 

In your presence there is life

And healing, St Columba.

Bowing with our faces in the dust,

We plead with you not to leave us

To live according to our own

Deceitful wisdom.  But ever

Dwell with us and teach us by your words

And show us by your ways how we also

May inherit the Light that never fades

And the Life that never ends.

***

A life of our Holy Father, St Columba of Iona (+597), may be read here:

https://orthochristian.com/104544.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!