Neophytos The Enclosed, Awakens Us Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

During the festive when I catechize I felt it was exorbitant
your boredom and sleepiness. Habits given by ancestors differ,
no carelessness in the soul or sleepiness∙ but in Byzantium
they get bored when one makes a speech or teaches on morality,
the civil servants learn the minimum; only what suffices to govern.

Don’t I inspire you? Consider me a smatterer with all I know?
Antic word is a stream, a fountain of values to drink and cleanse
interacts one to another: 'nipson anomimata mi monan opsin”.

I admit I’m not a scholar, like Saint Vassilios or Gregory,
or Augustine: I suffer just to be your pastor, brothers,
in this land where I reside, where good words are scarce,
where prostitution, adultery, sodomy are in surplus,
the syndrome of greed and Money smell offensively.

Unwilling is your spirit, weak the flesh, a nightmare the sleep,
so it’s good to listen and have no boredom during memorials,
but bring me an evidence to see if you have attended the mass.

That tree you see in Larnaca belongs to philosopher Zeno;
if verses dry up, I fondle its branches and it speaks up.
Romans used to water it, then the faithful of the catacombs;
taste it, like them, but don’t lie down asleep as sluggish ones;
cause if you do, it will throw a rotten fruit on your head. Thus,

welcome, lords and offspring of honour, if you are to water it,
or quit, you goats and monkeys, if you pull the tree off.


© JosephJosephides