THE DEATH OF ST. ANTHONY THE GREAT, FILIPPO BELLINI (1550/55-1664)

ANTHONY THE GREAT

It is all a misunderstanding. 

I did not want to leave a mark. 
I never wanted to be spoken about. 
I never wanted my name to be said 
and definitely not to be repeated, again 
and  
again,  
with such certainty 
that it frightens me.  

I am not great.   

My mother,  
she never called me great.  

It is all a misunderstanding. 

I feel lost inside a mirror of words 
where they happen, spontaneously,  
like flowers, but not under sun, not words  
but cravings, palpitating like hearts, open,  
not inside a body, fumbling, begging  
to be covered,  
like in a dream.  

I feel inside someone else's dream. 

It is all a misunderstanding. 

All I wanted was to make sense of things, 
alone, as one can only do,  
one thing at the time, 
of everything.   

To listen, uninterrupted, to the voice, 
and see if it was all there was,  
so vividly and so dyingly,  
like a brook, limpid and turbid  
and never the same, almost never itself 
as it moves along.  

But I am not the voice.  
Don't listen to me. 
I never meant what you hear. 
That wasn't my aim. 
It is all a misunderstanding.  

I am a question and not an answer. 

A wondering. 

Don't say my name.

—Stefan Balan

Abba Anthony said, “Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Without temptation no one can be saved.”