Gnosis (For Irenaeus of Lyon)
Against the stormy sea of gnosis
(rising, so transcendently,
on waves that lifted high above
the flesh, the concrete, physical!),
while wandering philosophers
preached gnosis all throughout his see,
sweeping all their hearers up
in currents of their eloquence,
a Bishop stood and bucked the tide,
and lifting up a bulwark to
hold against the heresies,
he shouted out in hyperbole
so he could be heard above
the sirens and the breakers’ roar,
then, as the sailors paused to hear
the fervour of his warning cry,
he dropped his voice down to a whisper,
letting it be overwhelmed
by the steady fog-horn from
the light-house of the word of life,
a beacon in that sea of gnosis
shining to the concrete Truth.
The Consolations of Writing 