! Orfeo Poem by Michael Shepherd

Orfeo shone.
He shone as music shines.

His shining, not the beauty of his radiant body;
it was the shining beauty of his humility.

And his humility – sometimes like gold,
sometimes like purest, deepest Maryblue -
the colour where the sky meets with infinity,
meets with eternity.

His humility, like hers, drew all things good:
and as you walked with him, all things were good:
the mountains, trees, and rocks and stones –
all things that do not move and cannot smile,
sang music to the heart, which smiled;

all moving things were drawn to him:
the wildest and most murderous beasts,
and beasts that look like men, or men like beasts;
some like vegetables that move…

all came to him, rubbed their heads against his legs,
licked his hands (were there the scars of wounds?) :
licked his feet (there too, the scars?) :

it was his fragrance that they recognised:
in the memory of these wildest beasts
deep in ancestral bones, the memory
of Adam’s fragrance, when he named each beast.

That fragrance is humility: that draws
the music of all things in heaven and earth:
draws heavenly space, and mountain air,
and fire of Sun itself, and water sparkling
as it springs from rocks;
the fragrance of fresh-turned, rich earth;

Orfeo shines.
he shines – as music shines.

*

{ from the treatise on the humble man
by Isaac of Nineveh, c.620-680 AD/CE }