Archives 89 – Cheshm

by Dani Kopoulos

Web-Latest-CheshmIt’s one of the first times I came to see you. I’ve been out in the mud and I come running when I’m called. As I cross the threshold, all at once the image of a baby goat comes to mind. I see quite clearly I am the runt, the ugly one with mud on its hooves and brambles in its mane.

I’m running in to your room, tracking clods of dirt and ignorance and gluttony across the rug. You have every reason to reject me. I would reject me. But you laugh and, in kindness, you show me a love that is at once impersonal and instructive. You are showing me how it is possible to love this goat. How loving this goat is God’s choice, and how funny it is to think otherwise, how strange to even question the matter. Your eyes make a joke of me, yet take the love in me dead serious. Your eyes show me how I might let myself be nourished, how I can let God’s nourishment flow into me. And yet they warn that I should not rely on anything in this world for sustenance.

Your eyes are simultaneously the most private window, and the most universal lens. I come to you begging, help me get from here to there, from this terrible place to that beautiful one. Get me through and away so that I can live unbothered, so I can relax, at rest on a cloud of truth and beauty. Your eyes remind me plainly there is no escape. And then, with a wink, they lead me out the back door. Buy the current issue to read the entire narrative.

artwork © Martin Harris

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