“Above all, the saving of lives,” whispered the Pope.
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde,
But for years the screaming continued, night and day,
And the little children were suffered to come along, too.
At night, Father, in the dark, when I pray,
I am there, I am there. I am pushed through
With the others to the strange room
Without windows; whitewashed walls, cement floor.
Millions, Father, millions have come to this pass,
Which a great church has voted to “deplore.”
Are the vents in the ceiling, Father, to let the spirit depart?
We are crowded in here naked, female and male.
An old man is saying a prayer. And now we start
To panic, to claw at each other, to wail
As the rubber-edged door closes on chance and choice.
He is saying a prayer for all whom this room shall kill.
“I cried unto the Lord God with my voice,
And He has heard me out His holy hill.”
II THE FIRE SERMON
Small paw tracks in the snow, eloquent of a passage
Neither seen nor heard. Over the timbered hill,
Turning at the fence, and under the crisp light of winter,
In blue shadows, trailing toward the town.
Beginning at the outposts, the foxtrot of death,
Silent and visible, slipped westward from the holy original east.
Even in “our sea” on a misty Easter
Ships were discovered adrift, heavy with pepper and tea,
The whole crew dead.
Was it a judgment?
Among the heathen, the king of Tharsis, seeing
Such sudden slaughter of his people, began a journey to Avignon
With a great multitude of his nobles, to propose to the pope
That he become a Christian and be baptized,
Thinking that he might assuage the anger of God
Upon his people for their wicked unbelief.
But when he had journeyed twenty days,
He heard the pestilence had struck among the Christians
As among other peoples. So, turning in his tracks,
He travelled no farther, but hastened to return home.
The Christians, pursuing these people from behind,
Slew about seven thousand of them.
At the horse-trough, at dusk,
In the morning among the fishbaskets,
The soft print of the dancing-master’s foot.
In Marseilles, one hundred and fifty Friars Minor.
In the region of Provence, three hundred and fifty-eight
Of the Friars Preachers died in Lent.
If it was a judgment, it struck home in the houses of penitence,
The meek and the faithful were in no wise spared.
Prayer and smoke were thought a protection.
Braziers smoldered all day on the papal floors.
During this same year, there was a great mortality
Of sheep everywhere in the kingdom;
In one place and in one pasture, more than five thousand sheep
Died and became so putrified
That neither beast nor bird wanted to touch them.
And the price of everything was cheap,
Because of the fear of death.
How could it be a judgment,
The children in convulsions, the sweating and stink,
And not enough living to bury the dead?
The shepherd had abandoned his sheep.
And presently it was found to be
Not a judgment.
The old town council had first to be deposed
And a new one elected, whose views agreed
With the will of the people. And a platform erected,
Not very high, perhaps only two inches above the tallest headstone,
But easy to view. And underneath it, concealed,
The excess lumber and nails, some logs, old brooms and straw,
Piled on the ancient graves. The preparations were hasty
But thorough, they were thorough.
A visitor to that town today is directed to
The Minster. The Facade, by Erwin von Steinbach,
Is justly the most admired part of the edifice
And presents a singularly happy union
Of the style of Northern France
With the perpendicular tendency
Peculiar to German cathedrals.
No signs of the platform are left, which in any case
Was outside the town walls.
But on that day, Saturday, February 14th,
The Sabbath, and dedicated to St. Valentine,
Everyone who was not too sick was down
To watch the ceremony. The clergy,
The new town council, the students
Of the university which later gave Goethe
His degree of Doctor of Laws.
For the evidence now was in: in Berne, under torture,
Two Jews had confessed to poisoning the wells.
Wherefore throughout Europe were these platforms erected,
Even as here in the city of Strasbourg,
And the Jews assembled upon them,
Children and all, and tied together with rope.
It is barren hereabout
And the wind is cold,
And the sound of prayer, clamor of curse and shout
Is blown past the sheepfold
Out of hearing.
The river worms through the snow plain
In kindless darks.
And man is born to sorrow and to pain
As surely as the sparks
Fly upward.
Father, among these many souls
Is there not one
Whom thou shalt pluck for love out of the coals?
Look, look, they have begun
To douse the rags.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To crie to thee,
And then not heare it crying! Who is strong
When the flame eats his knee?
O hear my prayer,
And let my cry come unto thee.
Hide not thy face.
Let there some child among us worthy be
Here to receive thy grace
And sheltering.
It is barren hereabout
And the wind is cold,
And the crack of fire, melting of prayer and shout
Is blown past the sheepfold
Out of hearing.
III THE DREAM
The contemplation of horror is not edifying,
Neither does it strengthen the soul.
And the gentle serenity in the paintings of martyrs,
St. Lucy, bearing her eyes on a plate,
St. Cecilia, whose pipes were the pipes of plumbing
And whose music was live steam,
The gridiron tilting lightly against the sleeve of St. Lawrence,
These, and others, bewilder and shame us.
Not all among us are of their kind.
Fear of our own imperfections,
Fear learned and inherited,
Fear shapes itself in dreams
Not more fantastic than the brute fact.
It is the first Saturday in Carnival.
There, in the Corso, homesick Du Bellay.
Yesterday it was acrobats, and a play
About Venetian magnificos, and in the interval
Bull-baiting, palm-reading, juggling, but today
The race. Observe how sad he appears to be:
Thinking perhaps of Anjou, the climbing grace
Of smoke from a neighbor’s chimney, of a place
Slate-roofed and kindly. The vast majesty
Of Rome is lost on him. But not the embrace
Of the lovers. See, see young harlequins bent
On stealing kisses from their columbines.
Here are the dolces, here the inebriate wines
Before the seemly austerities of Lent.
The couples form tight-packed, irregular lines
On each side of the mile-long, gorgeous course.
The men have whips and sticks with bunting tied
About them. Anointed Folly and his bride
Ordain Misrule. Camel and Barbary horse
Shall feel the general mirth upon their hide.
First down the gantlet, twenty chosen asses,
Grey, Midas-eared, mild beasts receive the jeers
And clouts of the young crowd. Consort of brasses
Salutes the victor at the far end. Glasses
Are filled again, the men caress their dears,
The children shout. But who are these that stand
And shuffle shyly at the starting line?
Twenty young men, naked, except the band
Around their loins, wait for the horn’s command.
Christ’s Vicar chose them, and imposed his fine.
Du Bellay, poet, take no thought of them;
And yet they too are exiles, and have said
Through many generations, long since dead,
“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,…”
Still, others have been scourged and buffeted
And worse. Think rather, if you must,
Of Piranesian, elegaic woes,
Rome’s grand declensions, that all-but-speaking dust.
Or think of the young gallants and their lust.
Or wait for the next heat, the buffaloes.
IV WORDS FOR THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence,
Nor, given the way things go,
Even of low cunning.
Yet I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a green bay tree.
And the good as if they had never been;
Their voices are blown away on the winter wind.
And again we wander the wilderness
For our transgressions
Which are confessed in the daily papers.
Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us
A very small remnant,
We should have been as Sodom,
We should have been like unto Gomorrah.
And to what purpose, as the darkness closes about
And the child screams in the jellied fire,
Had best be our present concern,
Here, in this wilderness of comfort
In which we dwell.
Shall we now consider
The suspicious postures of our virtue,
The deformed consequences of our love,
The painful issues of our mildest acts?
Shall we ask,
Where is there one
Mad, poor and betrayed enough to find
Forgiveness for us, saying,
“None does offend,
None, I say,
None”?
Listen, listen.
But the voices are blown away.
And yet, this light,
The work of thy fingers,…
The soul is thine, and the body is thy creation:
O have compassion on thy handiwork.
The soul is thine, and the body is thine:
O deed with us according to thy name.
We come before thee relying on thy name;
O deal with us according to thy name;
For the sake of the glory of thy name;
As the gracious and merciful God is thy name.
O Lord, for thy name’s sake we plead,
Forgive us our sins, though they be very great.
It is winter as I write.
For miles the holy treasuries of snow
Sag the still world with white,
And all soft shapes are washed from top to toe
In pigeon-colored light.
Tree, bush and weed maintain
Their humbled, lovely postures all day through.
And darkly in the brain
The famous ancient questions gather: Who
Fathered the fathering rain
That falleth in the wilderness
Where no man is, wherein there is no man;
To satisfy the cress,
Knotweed and moonwort? And shall scan
Our old unlawfulness?
Who shall profess to understand
The diligence and purpose of the rose?
Yet deep as to some gland,
A promised odor, even among these snows,
Steals in like contraband.
Forgiven be the whole Congregation of the Children of Israel, and the stranger dwelling in their midst. For all the people have inadvertently sinned.
Father, I also pray
For those among us whom we know not, those
Dearest to thy grace,
The saved and saving remnant, the promised third,
Who in a later day
When we again are compassed about with foes,
Shall be for us a nail in thy holy place
There to abide according to thy word.
Neither shall the flame
Kindle upon them, nor the fire burn
A hair of them, for they
Shall be thy care when it shall come to pass,
And calling on thy name
In the hot kilns and ovens, they shall turn
To thee as it is prophesied, and say,
“He shall come down like rain upon mown grass.”
A LETTER
I have been wondering
It is certainly not me.
But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering
Blood knows what it knows.
It talks to itself all night, like a sliding moonlit sea.
Of course, it is talking of you.
At dawn, where the ocean has netted its catch of lights,
The sun plants one lithe foot
On that spill of mirrors, but the blood goes worming through
Its warm Arabian nights,
Naming your pounding name again in the dark heart-root.
Who shall, of course, be nameless.
Anyway, I should want you to know I have done my best,
As I’m sure you have, too.
Others are bound to us, the gentle and blameless
Whose names are not confessed
In the ceaseless palaver. My dearest, the clear unquarried blue
Of those depths is all but blinding.
You may remember that once you brought my boys
Two little woolly birds.
Yesterday the older one asked for you upon finding
Your thrush among his toys.
And the tides welled about me, and I could find no words.
There is not much else to tell.
One tries one’s best to continue as before,
Doing some little good.
But I would have you know that all is not well
With a man dead set to ignore
The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
Wood engravings by Leonard Baskin
PRIDE
“For me Almighty God Himself has died,”
Said one who formerly rebuked his pride
With, “Father, I am not worthy,” and here denied
The Mercy by which each of us is tried.
ENVY
When, to a popular tune, God’s Mercy and Justice
Coagulate here again,
Establishing in tissue the True Republic
Of good looks to all men
And victuals and wit and the holy sloth of the lily,
Thou shalt not toil nor spin.
WRATH
I saw in stalls of pearl the heavenly hosts,
Gentle as down, and without private parts.
“Dies Irae,” they sang, and I could smell
The dead-white phosphorus of sacred hearts.
SLOTH
The first man leaps the ditch. (Who wins this race
Wins laurel, but laurel dies.)
The next falls in (who in his hour of grace
Plucked out his offending eyes.)
The blind still lead. (Consider the ant’s ways;
Consider, and be wise.)
AVARICE
The penniless Indian fakirs and their camels
Slip through the needle’s eye
To bliss (for neither flesh nor spirit trammels
Such as are prone to die)
And from emaciate heaven they behold
Our sinful kings confer
Upon an infant huge tributes of gold
And frankincense and myrrh.
GLUTTONY
Let the poor look to themselves, for it is said
Their savior wouldn’t turn stones into bread.
And let the sow continually say grace.
For moss shall build in the lung and leave no trace,
The glutton worm shall tunnel in the head
And eat the Word out of the parchment face.
LUST
The Phoenix knows no lust, and Christ, our mother,
Suckles his children with his vintage blood.
Not to be such a One is to be other.
UPON THE DEATH OF GEORGE SANTAYANA
Down every passage of the cloister hung
A dark wood cross on a white plaster wall;
But in the court were roses, not as tongue
Might have them, something of Christ’s blood grown small,
But just as roses, and at three o’clock
Their essences, inseparably bouqueted,
Seemed more than Christ’s last breath, and rose to mock
An elderly man for whom the Sisters prayed.
What heart can know itself? The Sibyl speaks
Mirthless and unbedizened things, but who