The End of Suffering

The End of Suffering

Scott Cairns

The severest pain will send you
to your bed, drop you to the floor.

The severest pain will roll you
into a fetal ball, and squeeze.

Within that grip, you might descend
into your long-abandoned core,

where, mid uncommon darkness, you
may find the door, whose opening

avails at last that lacuna
wherein the νους proves yet to be

also more spacious than heaven,
bearing also the Very God,

who is most pleased to meet you there.

[ νους—nous, often translated as “mind,” but better 
understood as “the intellective aptitude of the heart”]

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Scott Cairns
Poet & Professor

Scott is the Director of Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing. Author of forthcoming Lacunae: New Poems (Paraclete Press, November 2023) & Correspondence with My Greeks (Slant Books, 2024)

Photography by Calogero Agro