St. Jerome in Decline

Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit.

Philo knew the primary creation to be spiritual,

the secondary creation earthly, of the body-

and I know the mind hovers between both

realms as an intermediary, an agent conveying

breath to substance, ideas to deed.

I pride myself on being a vir trilinguis,

master of three tongues, a scholar, deacon,

church Father, translator and chronicler,

historian, traveler, counselor, and theologian,

exegete and recluse, a pedagogue, librarian.

But illness breaks me, and my eyesight dims

into winter's dusk. Like the Apostle Paul,

I still retain the skill of exhortation, but

my voice erodes and my strength abates.

Always at my sleeve now: my amanuensis,

he whose baldness reveals a fontanel

beating like a newborn's, so flung into rapt

focus is he, stylus in hand, during long dictations.

My own hand turns limaceous, though my thoughts

ripple and soar as I repeat the Psalter verses.

I've grown old. My thoughts ramble.

To us men, this life is a racecourse:

we contend here, we are crowned elsewhere.

No man can lay aside fear while serpents

beset his path. I dread impurity, but find

even in my decline, the footprints

of the devil lead my thoughts: his strength

is in the loins, and his force is in the navel-

thus must I make my final passage by

relinquishing all fleshly enticements.

These diaries record unholy ruminations-

my fatal circles of affection-but they capture

only half the man, a fresco barely penciled in:

the incomplete phantom of my contraband self,

a counter-life-intimate, dangerous as Pandora's box.

One by one, my friends have been taken from me,

my correspondents fade, then disappear into

death's grotto, and only the gentle ministrations

of Melania and the younger Paula bestir me with hope.

I am overburdened, still, by the sack of Rome,

by the putrid rise of Pelagianism, by the death

of my old debater and rival, dear, feeble Rufinus.

All Christendom seems under siege, as hordes

of barbarians sweep across the Empire, the streets

crowded with battered fugitives, starving refugees.

Deprivations, burning monasteries in Bethlehem,

my estrangement from Jerusalem's Bishop -

censure and petty arguments, hindrances, panics,

derision from my clerical foes, laughable contempt.

And Paula's absence most diminishes me.

Bethlehem, 399 A.D.