Book of Kells: St Matthew, by John Claiborne Isbell

Book of Kells: St Matthew, by anonymous (Ireland), 9th Century

Book of Kells: St Matthew

The man is eyeless, or his eyes are fixed
on something we can’t hope to see. Beneath
his naked feet, geometry – a field 
of abstract pattern where we might perceive 
the heads and feet of beasts and fowls. Beside 
the man – a calf, an eagle, though to each
abstraction comes, as if the absolute
burned through their flesh and bone. There is a sort 
of door or hallway arching past the man’s 

gold locks, his halo, vault on vault in much
the way one meets in church doors. In his left
long-fingered hand, a closed book. Who is this
that comes in glory? What is in the book
he has not opened yet? What does he see
that we do not? In red and gold and blue
and lilac he has come to us on this
bare vellum rectangle. The swirl and line
of vision wraps around him. As we gaze
we are made holy. There is no escape.

John Claiborne Isbell

Since 2016, various MSS of John Claiborne Isbell’s have placed as finalist or semifinalist for The Washington Prize (three times), The Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes (twice), the Elixir Press 19th Annual Poetry Award, The Gival Press Poetry Award, the 2020 Able Muse Book Award (twice) and the 2020 Richard Snyder Publication Prize. He published his first book of poetry, Allegro, in 2018, and has published in Poetry Durham, threecandles.org, the Jewish Post & Opinion, and The Ekphrastic Review. As a young man in the 1990s, he published books with Oxford and with Cambridge University Press and appeared in Who’s Who in the World.