[POEM] Nekyia and four poems

“Nekyia” speaks of the dark night of the soul, particularly the idea of being-with as the only going-beyond; “Time” depicts chronos as effecting either strangulation or stagnation—that is, when viewed at the expense of kairos; “crucifixio” conveys the idea of wounding as a growing down into transcendence; “Paredros” functions as a spiritual invocation; lastly, “Elixir Vitae” alludes to self-alchemization.

Nekyia

A voice bid me:
to live and not wait for the grief to end,

hence I died on behalf of life,

that I may learn to go beyond hope
and bear witness.

Further, it pressed me:
to pray without ceasing—Dadirri,

hence I let my senses ripen,

that I may listen to what spirits stir,
and bless them.

Still more, it beckoned me:
to go alone into vital darkness,

hence I made good my descent,

that I may arrive at my own confusion,
and so rise again.

Brief author’s note: Dadirri, from the Ngangikurungkurr people, gestures toward deep listening; it is honoured here as metaphor.

Time

Time
keeps me
wheel-bound, else
under God’s eye—dust
amidst oblivion, where fast-fading
is the immemorial rhyme,
and daily I founder
upon this self
divided.

crucifixio

a wound worthy of your faultlessness,
a wound through which the faultless may ascend,
Christ there you grew:

where the stake stood
there also the womb—

agape—
proving thus Holiness.

as below, so
the sky now too a wound
forked-through.

Paredros

You who, with eyes communing
always with angels,
bereave me of the world:

Whereupon rests
your downward gaze?
Take me there.

To the place of your
enduring vernality, and
life at its most unsayable.

To where you are,
awake with sleep's perfection,
simple and most entire.

For all else is vast wilderness,
from which flees none but
evidence of respite.

Elixir Vitae

Because it is no small matter to take in —

I ask you:

Is your mouth riverbed enough
to welcome the sudden inpour?

And, is your throat ferryman enough
to usher it down into oblivion?

— that is, to enact purely this rite of
purification.

Krystle Eilen is a poet currently attending university. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review, Stone Circle Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Quibble Lit, and The Argyle Literary Magazine, among others. You can find her @ iccaruso on Instagram.