Smoke And Incense Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

The snakes are frozen so they don't pose an immediate problem but the smile and incense of ritual activity protects the monks. Their continuous worship of God also saves them from the venom.This cannot be a pagan temple because pagans in the Mediterranean region saw snakes as beneficent creatures, symbols of immortality, lords of life, as D.H.Lawrence puts it in his poem THE SNAKE. But don't get me wrong: KEEP THE INCENSE BURNING