Epiphany – a poem by John Claiborne Isbell

Epiphany


The heart is slowly crushed. Commence
to contemplate the gap there is
from us to God. The difference
is fact, not some hypothesis.

A vision at the edge of sense
fills our bright mind. God does not miss.
All the deceit, all the pretense
we walk in is no path to bliss.

The things we thought we knew were so
are not. Now, like light on a glass,
God touches us. A tremolo

runs through us and it comes to pass
that we are rinsed as clean as snow
in this brief war, in this morass.
 

John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023), both available free online, and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (forthcoming). John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.