The Pauline Letters

In my poem, "The Pauline Letters" which I wrote when I was taking New Testament in the Spring of '23, several threads are working together, as is often typical of my poems. I usually start with an image, in this case, Paul writing late into the night to one of the many groups of early Christians with whom he corresponded. With this image, I explored how he might have physically felt after writing all night, and from there I could connect Paul to ordinary people in our own time.

They all start with a greeting:

“My dear friends, I salute you,”

or words to that effect,

not just a simple “Dear Friend,”

And I think about him sitting at some table

somewhere with stylus and scroll,

stopping now and then to weigh a word,

deciding when to chastise, when to praise,

watching the morning sun slant across the room,

and realizing that he’d written all night by the light

of the small oil lamp and that his head aches.

How long has it been since you wrote all night?

How long has it been since you even

began a letter, let alone one with an effusive salutation?

How long has it been since you, like Paul,

thought that the end of the world was near?