After Ephesians 1:20-23, 3:18-19
Those cities
once so vibrant,
filled with
people and commerce,
sights and
sounds, always
the sounds of
life throbbing
and growing,
cloaking
themselves in
proud names:
Ephesus,
Philippi, Colossae,
Corinth, and not
just Antioch
but Pisidian
Antioch as well,
to differentiate
younger
from older,
Smyrna, Pergamum,
Sardis,
Thyatira, Laodicea,
Philadelphia,
names flowing
from the tongue like
great dramas,
Greek dramas,
dramas now shrouded
by the closed
curtain, and now
behind the
curtain lies only outlines
in stone,
implications without certainty,
suggestions only
of the wife
shouting down
the street
at her husband
or child. Instead,
only the sounds
of the wind
are heard, wind
without memory,
the taste of
aging dust.
