“Which is first?” Saint Anthony asked.
He imagined Constantine
(“In hoc signo vinces”)
                         who winked
at the Chi-Rho squinting made
before he spread open Maxentius’s head
and monogrammed his soldiers.
Chi and rho:
               and all the golden
sentences spilled from the lips
of golden saints.

“The mind of letters or letters
of the mind?”
               Anthony never remembered
how to read and so he thought
his thoughts, unscripted.

At night, in his cave
he carried a staff.
                       “The symbol
of the cross or simply tau?”
His disciples saw it as a crux
but he put it beneath his heart.

copyright,  © 2007 Eric Reymond