PSALM 146

Lauda, anima mea.
Praise the Lord O my soul.
An outstanding preacher, St Peter Chrysologus looked deep into his own anima.
He drank deep out of poverty’s bowl.

But only a few fragments survive.
Lauded in life his works are largely lost.
So what we write will be lucky to end up in a forgotten archive.
But who cares, we do it for pleasure despite any effort cost.

In Ravenna there survives a portrait, a marble fragment.
Peter, a man of golden speech.
Can we those lost works lament.
And ponder him out of time’s brief reach.

A distant echo from a dissolving empire.
All rises and falls into fate’s quagmire.