1 'Like everybody else …'
'Like everybody else, I bowed my head
during the consecration of the bread and wine,
lifted my eyes to the raised host and raised chalice,
believed (whatever it means) that a change occurred.
I went to the altar rails and received the mystery
on my tongue, returned to my place, shut my eyes fast, made
an act of thanksgiving, opened my eyes and felt
time starting up again.
There was never a scene
when I had it out with myself or with another.
The loss occurred off-stage. And yet I cannot
disavow words like "thanksgiving" or "host"
or "communion bread". They have an undying
tremor and draw, like well water far down.'
2 Brancardier
You're off, a pilgrim, in the age of steam:
Derry, Dun Laoghaire, Dover, Rue du Bac
(Prayers for the Blessed M. M. Alacoque,
That she be canonized). Then leisure time
That evening in Paris, whence to Lourdes,
Learning to trust your learning on the way:
'Non, pas de vin, merci. Mais oui, du thé,'
And the waiter's gone to take you at your word.
Hotel de quoi in Rue de quoi? All gone.
But not your designation, brancardier,
And your coloured bandolier, as you lift and lay
The sick on stretchers in precincts of the shrine
Or on bleak concrete to await their bath.
And always the word 'cure' hangs in the air
Like crutches hung up near the grotto altar.
And always prayers out loud or under breath.
Belgian miners in blue dungarees
March in procession, carrying brass lamps.
Sodalities with sashes, poles and pennants
Move up the line. Mantillas, rosaries
And the unam sanctam catholicam acoustic
Of that underground basilica – maybe
Not gone but not what was meant to be,
The concrete reinforcement of the Mystic-
al Body, the Eleusis of its age.
I brought back one plastic canteen litre
On a shoulder-strap (très chic) of the Lourdes water.
One small glass dome that englobed an image
Of the Virgin above barefoot Bernadette –
Shake it and the clear liquid would snow
Flakes like white angel feathers on the grotto.
And (for stretcher-bearing work) a certificate.
3 Saw Music
Q. Do you renounce the world?
A. I do renounce it.
Barrie Cooke has begun to paint 'godbeams',
Vents of brightness that make the light of heaven
Look like stretched sheets of fluted silk or rayon
In an old-style draper's window. Airslides, scrims
And scumble. Columnar sift. But his actual palette
Is ever sludge and smudge, as if a shower
Made puddles on the spirit's winnowing floor.
What it reminds me of is a wet night
In Belfast, around Christmas, when the man
Who played the saw inside the puddled doorway
Of a downtown shop, in light from a display
Of tinselled stuffs and sleigh bells blinking neon,
Started to draw his bow across the blade.
The stainless steel was oiled or Vaselined,
The saw stood upside down and his left hand
Pressed light or heavy as the tune required
Flop-wobble grace note or high banshee whine.
Rain spat upon his threadbare gaberdine,
Into his cap where the occasional tossed coin
Basked on damp lining, the raindrops glittering
Like the saw's greased teeth his bow caressed and crossed
Back across unharmed. 'The art of oil painting –
Daubs fixed on canvas – is a paltry thing
Compared with what cries out to be expressed,'
The poet said, who lies this god-beamed day
Coffined in Krakow, as out of this world now
As the untranscendent music of the saw
He might have heard in Vilnius or Warsaw
And would not have renounced, however paltry.
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