Читать книгу Mercy Wears a Red Dress - David Craig - Страница 8

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?