Mercy Wears a Red Dress. David Craig

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СКАЧАТЬ pilgrimage like prayerful

      maggots up the insides of summer trash cans,

      across the lids: they slowly herd themselves,

      turning, tiny mouths lifted in song—

      they cannot see! But that does not stop them

      as they make their way toward a new Jerusalem.

      Thank you for smiling through your statue’s paint

      when I come to visit you in Adoration—

      for liking me more than the world does.

      You are home to me, not this artfully

      messy office, 25-year consolation pen set;

      not my widescreen TV at home; not even

      football. I could cross my legs in prayer

      like a yogi if I want. It would not matter.

      You would pull the cover up under my chin

      at night, sing me a song.

      Let the world go on as it does; I will dance

      around my older children, make strange noises

      to amuse them. They may not understand,

      but will be gathered in.

      Thank you for today. Good things might

      very well happen! A stranger could knock

      on my door. A check could arrive,

      students line the halls with lifted pens, confetti.

      Someone I don’t know could cut my grass.

      Sagrada Familia

      You could see the Mediterranean

      from the towers, the colored fruit,

      the script; stained glass on fire inside, high

      boles on pillar trees, all the creation,

      elevation, cool space prayer could use.

      Gaudi was in town too, where his angels

      got fined for his every over-the-top attempt

      to amend the human condition.

      (“We need more sidewalk here.”)

      But it’s always mercy, the people, isn’t it,

      who finally make a trip? The guy

      who tried French to direct lost us, our

      first night in Barcelona; he left, only

      to come back, help us find our hostel.

      Picasso and Dali showed,

      but it was the other Gothic Cathedral

      that spoke to Linda and me: an organist,

      as if on cue, up high and to the left

      beginning her Bach as we came in—

      a trumpeter, my delight, soon joining in.

      And the people in Gaming:

      the philosopher and historian hoisting tankards,

      all the families, inviting us over for dinner.

      (Professor Cassidy, in kilt, leaving

      that semester, calling us “the dear Craigs.”)

      And St. Joseph himself: the grounds man,

      Maros—his family, his own Downs’ son;

      priests too, Fr. Matthew, on the bus,

      making amends for leaving us behind

      in his mad rush for Mercy’s Polish shrine.

      Campus children came over to sing

      my shy daughter happy birthday.

      St. Francis breathed Assisi, sure;

      Anthony, delivering his delightfully

      third-world Padua; St. Paul, inside-his-walls.

      (And in Rome, when I had to pull my Down’s guy,

      stuck, through a moving metro door.)

      Europe was, is, thankfully, not America.

      It breathes a different air, less cowboy waste,

      more concern for the little things, for the fact

      that they are all in this together.

      Post-colonialist tact perhaps. I didn’t belong,

      but liked the fact that they seemed to.

      There’s no denying it: Austrians

      kill their babies, too, but they so obviously

      pay for it. You can see that in how kind

      and isolated they are.

      Who will ever save us from ourselves?

      And when will He come?

      The Vatican

      They hadn’t time to sort the modern—

      our Jesuit guide called it “mom’s fridge.”

      (Besides, there was the matter of donations.)

      I wanted to idiot time,

      go back to the Renaissance tripe,

      him noting that the painter had revised

      900 times. “How many people

      would do that today?”

      By the time we got to the Sistine: ceiling,

      walls of Marvel—comics, Thor and Captain

      America’s abs, I had to tell him:

      they needed to get down there,

      make some calls.

      The best do not deserve the rest.

      This СКАЧАТЬ