Abba Moses the Robber the Black

Because of visits a few times to an Orthodox church I began to research some Orthodox saints. While researching I came across an African saint named St. Moses the Black. This was of high interest to me since I am African-American, and I keep insisting that Christianity is an Eastern religion, something that many Westerners seem to forget and in the process take the life out of it. Also Christian monasticism had its roots in Africa. This is a poem in fourteen parts about St. Moses the Black (330-405). After being a very mean character he found God and became an ascetic and a priest. This is my poetic recreation of his life story. I embellished some events and left out a few others. Since this is a long poem, I will post it serially over the coming weeks. I feel that a blog is not the best milieu for long topics, but still I wanted to share this poem here.

I

My head rests in a pool of blood
as ruffians and thugs rush and entwine
like rats looting our little holy retreat.
This is where it begins for me.

II

St. Moses the Black was once a very,
very angry man. A Nubian aurochs,
ancient bull waiting and aching
to crash out of his pen. Toss the world
on his horns. A robber, a ruffian
voice an earthquake. Evil was his tonic,
the sewage in his soul.

III

I was a slave of an Egyptian official.
He feared, despised me.
Disgust and pleading in his voice
one day after a theft and rumor of a murder.
Moses go.
You break things.
You break lives.
You take things.
You break my life.
Moses go.
He pointed outside,
golden ring on an elegant finger.

IV

I left my master's house.
The air of freedom was good.
It coursed through my lungs
while evil coursed through my soul.
In a palm populated valley
near the Nile, bandits lived.
I joined them.
They welcomed me first with suspicion,
then fear and respect.
Stronger, more fearsome,
blacker than them all.
I became leader of the mixed bunch
of beige, brown, red, black men.
Terror was our business,
robbery our litany.
The wailing of women,
the cry of infants
as we cut down husbands and fathers
along the Nile, in the valleys,
oases, hills and mountains.
I created with pleasure many widows
and orphans, stole much timid livestock.
My boys and I laughed, ran, rode off
as village or lone hut went up in flames,
taking all the animals and goods that
we could. I lived like a king one week,
the next week a pauper.
My stolen goods all poured
into alcohol, women, gambling.

(To be continued)