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Poet Philip Metres created this meditation on suffering, pain, and release in response to the theme of healing and Matthew 8:5-13.

Matthew 8:5-13

For the Prison of Skin (A Prayer Triptych)

By 

Philip Metres

Credits: 

Artist Location: Cleveland, Ohio

Curated by: 

Hayan Charara

2014

Poetry

Image by Giorgio Trovato

Primary Scripture

When he came into Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking him,
and saying, “Lord, my servant lies in the house paralyzed, grievously tormented.”
Jesus said to him,
“I will come and heal him.”
The centurion answered, “Lord, I’m not worthy for you to come under my roof. Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
For I am also a man under authority, having under myself soldiers. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and tell another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and tell my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard it, he marveled, and said to those who followed,
“Most certainly I tell you, I haven’t found so great a faith, not even in Israel.


I tell you that many will come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven,


but the children of the Kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Jesus said to the centurion,
“Go your way. Let it be done for you as you have believed.” His servant was healed in that hour.

Matthew 8:5-13

For nearly all of 2010, after a muscle tear, I was flung into the hell of chronic pain. The months of pain felt like a divinely-inspired torment, and I could not understand why it was happening to me. Everything I thought I knew about myself, my body, and life was cast into the fires of that suffering. At the time, I read somewhere that mathematics of suffering could be described as pain, times our psychic resistance to this pain.


My resistance to that pain was Job’s: Why do I deserve this? Why has God done this to me? What is the meaning of this meaningless abyss?


After having written many poems about the War on Terror for the book Sand Opera, I wondered if somehow I had taken inside myself the suffering to which I was mere witness; it was if that now I could no longer separate myself from the physical and psychic torments of the abused at Abu Ghraib or in black sites.


The usual suspects of Western medicine could not help me. I turned to prayer, to meditation, to acupuncture, to physical therapy, to acupuncture, to spiritual direction. I owe my healing to many people—my wife Amy, my kids, my parents, Doctor Lui, Father Don Cozzens—all of whom stroked or stoked me back to me.


The poem “For the Prison of Skin” (an early version of which was published in Poems of Devotion) draws on that particular personal odyssey/theodicy, and also reflects on Matthew’s story of the centurion, a soldier of empire, who asks Jesus to heal his servant; he knows he is unworthy of hosting Jesus, but he believes and is healed.




Spark Notes

The Artist's Reflection

Philip Metres is the author and translator of a number of books and chapbooks, including Sand Opera (2015), A Concordance of Leaves(2013)abu ghraib arias (2011), and To See the Earth (2008). His work has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Watson Fellowship, five Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Beatrice Hawley Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. In 2014, he received a Creative Workforce Fellowship, thanks to the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, residents of Cuyahoga County, and Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. He is professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland.



Philip Metres

About the Artist

Philip Metres

Other Works By 

Related Information
Image by Aaron Burden

You threw me down, Lord, on the bed I did not know I was making, unmade.

For the Prison of Skin (A Prayer Triptych)


1.


You threw me down, Lord, on the bed

I did not know I was making, unmade.

Your arms held me down until I could feel

the panic of prey, could taste the bitter


of ends, the tunnel stripped of light,

Lord, you pressed your terrible weight

against the length of my indivisible

body, your invisible inexorable weight,


your hands around my neck until I could see

nothing but the black in front of me,

your hurting whole behind me, in me now


shivering, praying for this prison of skin

to release this voice to air, that these needle nerves

unshackle the this I am, the this you are.


2.


Lord, I am not worthy, I am unweal-

thy without you, but I am not unwilled,

am not still in you. Yes, my soul is rest-

less and does not rest in you, my Lord,


and I’m not ready to be seized by you

in receiving you. Unsteady in swells

of you, I’m unmasted in the squall of you

in the sea of you, cannot outlast you.


But only say the word and I shall be

hurled from all hurt, thrown beyond shoals, unswal-

lowed in shallows. Say the word and I shall


be held, will the world and I shall be born,

say it and I shall be beheld and hold

you, my Lord, say it with my mouth, I’m yours.


3.


Lord, in the fracture of the bleakest

black, under this roof, in the dying

dark, let me turn and slide my aching

hips up to the back of this day, curl


my arm beneath the still-dreaming side

of this day, Lord, let me cup the soft breast

of this day, tender as the tender child

who opened its door with loving suck,


let me bury my face in the fragrant

scalp of this day, then turn this day toward me,

open my eyes to eyes now leading


everything to light, and stroke the dream-

flung hair that frames the lovely face

of this day that breaks into waking.




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Image by Aaron Burden

You threw me down, Lord, on the bed I did not know I was making, unmade.

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