In 1353, Catherine of Sienna—a child of five—gazes
across the church of St. Dominic  to find standing before her, Jesus bathed in blood and light.

I.

She dreams      (her life)         

Austerity

 

Desire             Visions of a Saint.               Ours  lesser.  And so I see them again

 

The three boys from high school—the Twins and their cousin—and a fourth who

                          I had barely known,

And who had overdosed and been left one night     already dead the others claimed

In a ditch alongside a South Kingston road.  “What else—” I imagine them asking

Those lost boys

              who sat and drank with us in the Hilltop before returning to strip the dead one

    of wallet and coat—“Tell us,” they might have said.  “What else could we do?”

II.

The priests warn: A Holy Serpent presigns the God of Faith.

 

And the prophets beseech: Eat this text.

           

Gulls wheel now about to dive.

            A Bank Swallow, close toward shore,

And a single ribbon of clouds smudge the bottom corner

Of a half-moon sky.  Below, three villas: whitewashed                                  

            hard

            against the sea.  Italy: The Two Days

Of the Dead.

Easter.  It is Sunday, 2003.  I am thirty years old.  I sit alone in a busy

square drinking coffee and imagine briefly a field at night and a ditch and the quiet

 faces—clearly

 —of the Twins  as they bend to a boy who lies perfect

  before them.   Just  a single

                        moment. Then several girls of perhaps ten

                        pass by               talking

low

                        and laughing      And the seagulls

                           again      overhead

            and a breeze stirring (as if in August) what appears to be a single sheet of rain

            which rushes almost without

            warning

across the square and is immediately lost once more to the absolute blue of morning.

The girls smile.  One stands

   alone  on the top step of a café  where—looking up—she had seconds before

Hesitated    raised both arms (bent from the elbow) palms cupped as if to catch

  the rainwater

which quickly

ran

 

down   through her fingers and along her throat.

            Nothing more—

The girl

Her hand

  (in rain)

            and blue  

   blue risen

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