Peter Filkins
AUGUSTINE’S VISION
AUGUSTINE’S VISION
Many years later, while contemplating beauty
as order, he would think of them: gamecocks
sharpening their claws for a scrap, and how
he simply had to watch them while on his way
to be baptized and confess, accept the glory
of God in all things, himself a creature of sin.
As he stood watching, he knew he courted error,
the beauty of a thing in and of itself
not always the same as God’s invisible plan,
the gamecocks and their darting, skillful parries,
the exultant crowing, bodies taut with power,
soon whipping the crowd into a drunken frenzy.
“For what horizon do eyes of love not scan,
hoping for a hint of reason’s beautiful scheme,”
he later wrote, thinking of colorful birds
pitched in battle, pure animal action
without mind – limp wings and carriage, a croak
gone awry, all of it fitting nature’s set way.
Though this was years before he lay on his deathbed,
Hippo surrounded, the Vandal hordes approaching,
as Augustine lamented his sins, thinking of gamecocks,
their beaks and talons bloodied, no doubt convinced
a higher mind worked through them, ordering all things,
as the saint continued weeping inside his narrow cell.
