445 Religion poems

Every town with black Catholics has a St. Peter Claver’s. My first was nursery school. Miss Maturin made us fold our towels in a regulation square and nap on army cots. No mother questioned; no child sassed. In blue pleated skirts, pants, and white shirts, we stood in line to use the open toilets and conserved light by walking in darkness. Unsmiling, mostly light-skinned, we were the children of the middle class, preparing to take our parents’ places in a world that would demand we fold our hands and wait. They said it was good for us, the bowl of soup, its pasty whiteness; I learned to swallow and distrust my senses. On holy cards St. Peter’s face is olive-toned, his hair near kinky; I thought he was one of us who pass between the rich and poor, the light and dark. Now I read he was “a Spanish Jesuit priest who labored for the salvation of the African Negroes and the abolition of the slave trade.” I was tricked again, robbed of my patron, and left with a debt to another white man.

Seynt Stevene was a clerk in Kyng Herowdes halle, And servyd him of bred and cloth, as every kyng befalle. Stevyn out of kechone cam, wyth boris hed on honde; He saw a sterre was fayr and bryght over Bedlem stonde. He kyst adoun the boris hed and went in to the halle: "I forsak the, Kyng Herowdes, and thi werkes alle." "I forsak the, Kyng Herowdes, and thi werkes alle; Ther is a chyld in Bedlem born is beter than we alle." "Quat eylyt the, Stevene? quat is the befalle? Lakkyt the eyther mete or drynk in Kyng Herowdes halle?" "Lakit me neyther mete ne drynk in Kyng Herowdes halle; Ther is a chyld in Bedlem born is beter than we alle." "Quat eylyt the, Stevyn? Art thu wod, or thu gynnyst to brede? Lakkyt the eyther gold or fe, or ony ryche wede?" "Lakyt me neyther gold ne fe, ne non ryche wede; Ther is a chyld in Bedlem born xal helpyn us at our nede." "That is al so soth, Stevyn, al so soth, iwys. As this capoun crowe xal that lyth here in myn dysh." That word was not so sone seyd, that word in that halle, The capoun crew Cristus natus est! among the lordes alle. "Rysyt up, myn turmentowres, be to and al be on, And ledyt Stevyn out of this toun, and stonyt hym wyth ston!" Tokyn he Stevene, and stonyd hym in the way, And therfore is his evyn on Crystes owyn day.

Before it disappears on the sand his long white      beard before it disappears The face of the man in the waves I ask her does she see it ask her does The old man in the waves      as the waves crest she see it does she see the old man his White     his face crumbling face it looks as old as he’s as old as The ocean looks and for a moment almost looks His face like it’s     all the way him As never such old skin looks my / Daughter age four She thinks it might he might be real she shouts Hello And after there’s no answer answers No

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow-dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, The sound of glory ringing in our ears, Without, our shame, within, our consciences, Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

When the snake bit Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa while he was praying the snake died. (Each day is attended by surprises or it is nothing.) Question: was the bare-footed, smelly Rabbi more poisonous than the snake or so God-adulterated he’d become immune to serpent poison? Oh great-great-great-uncles, your palms weighing air, why are you arguing? Listen, the snake thought (being old and unwell and bad-tempered as hell) Death, where’s thy sting? In short, was just testing: a snake’s last fling. Yes, the so-called snake was dying anyway, its heart calcified and as old as Eden. No, that snake was A1 fit but while hissing for fun it clumsily bit its own tongue. No, Hanina invented that snake; not for his own sake but for first- class, religious publicity. No no, here’s the key to it. Ask: did the Rabbi, later on, become a jumpy, timid man? Remember, he who has been bitten by a snake thereafter becomes frightened of a rope … Bearded men in darkening rooms sipping lemon tea and arguing about the serpent till the moon of Russia, of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, rose above the alien steeples—centuries of sleep. Now, tonight, a clean-shaven rabbi who once studied in Vienna says snake-venom contains haemolysins, haemo- coagulants, protolysins, cytolysins and neurotoxins and that even in Hanina ben Dosa’s day a snake was a snake—unless, of course, it was a penis, an unruly penis, making a noise like one pissing on a mound of fresh hot ashes. Oh great-great-great-uncles did you hear him? And are your handbones weighing moonshine?

I put those things there.—See them burn. The emerald the azure and the gold Hiss and crack, the blues & greens of the world As if I were tired. Someone interferes Everywhere with me. The clouds, the clouds are torn In ways I do not understand or love. Licking my long lips, I looked upon God And he flamed and he was friendlier Than you were, and he was small. Showing me Serpents and thin flowers; these were cold. Dominion waved & glittered like the flare From ice under a small sun. I wonder. Afterward the violent and formal dancers Came out, shaking their pithless heads. I would instruct them but I cannot now,— Because of the elements. They rise and move, I nod a dance and they dance in the rain In my red coat. I am the king of the dead.

Never let my hands be to any one an occasion to temptation. — ISABEL DE FLORES She was the joke of the angels—a girl crazy enough for God that she despised her own beauty; who grew bitter herbs to mix with her food, who pinned a garland of roses to her forehead; and who, in a fury of desire concocted a potion of Indian pepper and bark and rubbed it on her face, neck, and breasts, disfiguring herself. Then, locked away in a dark cell, where no reflection was possible, she begged for death to join her with her Master whom she called Divine Bridegroom, Thorn in My Heart, Eternal Spouse.

When no one else would listen, Saint Anthony preached seaward, his words fishnet for the lost souls of the heretics. Caught up in despair, we plea to the one who will listen: Saint Anthony, please return Tía’s teeth or the misplaced key to our bolted hopes. Patron retriever of all we’ve tossed when no one else would. Listen, Saint Anthony, teach us to steward this world, all our netted loss.

for Janet and Christopher Half-eagle, half-lion, the fabulous animal struts, saber-clawed but saintly, a candlewicked ornament dangling from our rickety sugar pine. Butternut pudding in our bellies. His reindeer and sleigh hurried here and gone—thank God for us childless folks. Almost:   the lovelocked Griffins on the sofa, sockfooted, hearing gas and a kiddy heart in her tummy— a life more imaginary than real, though one is dazzled by gold that fills the egg unbroken. We feed her crumpets and listen again: The lamb’s a hungry bugger, even snug from earth’s imponderable fury. Tomorrow, in a spurt by jet I’m home. Clumsy as a puppy I’ll scale the flightstairs into the nosecone, luggage banging at my sides, enter the egg- shaped cabin and await the infrared climb toward space. Tell me one thing true? If I could count the way things slip from us: Mother’s fur gloves, Sunday’s benediction, the dead gone before us, love’s rambler on the prairie—all displaced as we buckle in our shuttle, jetbound on a screaming runway, gravity pulling at us castaways, more mammal than bird, subtle leg-weary griffins made manifest, arrowing towards home. How do we ignore it: the attenuated being of our age, the bittersweet collapse of dominoes mooned around our pine? Withered with hatred from his quarter, Saint Stephen even at death rolled mercifully over in high holiness. Sonless, wifeless, nine thousand feet from land, I roll the lozenge on my tongue, youthful habit for ache of any kind, parting a survivor (Wait!), love rescuing me from the fringe.

"NOW YAHWEH ORDERED THAT A GREAT FISH SHOULD SWALLOW HIM." Into my backyard’s six fat squares of concrete rigged with clothesline, Charlie the Cop swung gunnysacks convulsed with Jersey chickens. From the open view of other yards, unfolded down the block, neighbor women watched ours boil tub water; the barechested men, laying out knives and cleavers, fumbled the animals into daylight, in the middle of my world, my certain place, not stump roots on the cold Atlantic floor of mountains I’d imagined, one week every summer, from the hot Wildwood boardwalk. But just then Charlie lifted me above his head, saying “O Billy Boy you've never in your life seen this! Want it?” The ground gone, steep drag of thinned air, chicken squawk tingling in my ears with dim human voices. Charlie threw me in the sea. The underplace, swallowing my heart, opened like a horn of plenty, blood channels lit blue and red like pinball arteries, flesh-motes, mucus, sinew, pulsing viscera bits dripping from clothesline. Missile tracks horned across the ceiling. In the ribcage, stooped beggars crowded, kicking spongy gouts of something; deeper in the tunnel, toward the tail, in files winding out of sight, shaved heads, men and women in pajamas. Spear carriers paced the walls. Into my vaulted space came words not really words: shades, images with a worldly shape of meaning, but beyond me, aloof and hysterical. The silence wrapped me like a prickly woolen sleeve knit by my women’s voices, shouting, out there, unrecoverable, dense, while their horny hands plucked and the sweaty men teased, stuffing tacky down inside their headscarves. Inside, blood cells combed my walls, unfinished patterns seeped through as picturegrams that glided across the whale’s belly. A still life with ginger jar and pomegranates. A flayed, ripening Christ. An Ohio puddler stirring pigiron mash, whose back is the same one in Giotto’s Gethsemane that stays the hand slicing off a soldier’s ear. Mercury, my heart, the sickening beautiful shiftingness of things. Kettles steamed, tin basins quivered with guts, my dear hell’s bloodglyphs in things, in me. I’d not be whole in and of the world again. Quills cracked when Charlie put me down. In my backyard, in my head, women sang under a pier to the unformed sea, an unvoiced song I’d heard inside the monster, breezing now through clotheslines. Men scrubbed their hands at the spigot, the women sighing. Flies left charcoal scrawls on the air and grazed old stains; they lighted on my arms, not waiting, but constant, my familiars, until their manic newsiness went away. Then, in that twilight, slow, shadowless lightning bugs appeared, going on and off.