Catalina Rembuyan
Saint Hypatia
Hypatia sits in a room, eyes watching the sky
observing the order of the stars.
This alien faith that sweeps the land
And strikes dumb mobs,
They say that Hypatia had intention.
They re-created her.
They say that they now have Catherine in the flesh.
Now she walks the spirit world with another name
Her memory undying -- eternal --
And that somewhere in a place
where faith and doubt walk hand-in-hand
there is a field
and in that field
Hypatia-as-Catherine, and I-as-Catherine
will, Godwilling, meet.
See: they took her out of the calendar
this thing
of divine time made earthly,
and then she came back*.
[Look -- her ikon, with the wheel
and the crown and the stars]
“Because it takes the removal of skepticism
to have faith and
it takes great faith to be a doubter.”
*Almost as if she wanted to be there
They tore her flesh
Her screams would not stay quiet
This alien faith that sweeps the land
and makes mad mobs
the fire in Alexandria is burning.
And there is an immortal Godmadeflesh
shrouded
in darkness.
Catalina Rembuyan is an educator, writer of fiction and spoken word poet. She has performed poetry in numerous events in Kuala Lumpur and has been published in New Village, Anak Sastra, and the Asian Centre Anthology of Malaysian Poetry in English. She blogs at http://catalinarembuyan.squarespace.com
In the poet's own words with regards to 'Saint Hypertia': "It is a religious poem and was written after I discovered that the patron saint I am named after, Catherine of Alexandria, was very likely the scholar Hypatia who was massacred by a Christian mob. The disjointed nature of the poem is deliberate, to reflect the irregular ways a person may meditate on an aspect of faith."