Sagrada Familia
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?
The Vatican
They hadn’t time to sort the modern—
our Jesuit guide called it “mom’s fridge.”
(Besides, there was the matter of donations.)
I wanted to idiot time,
go back to the Renaissance tripe,
him noting that the painter had revised
900 times. “How many people
would do that today?”
By the time we got to the Sistine: ceiling,
walls of Marvel—comics, Thor and Captain
America’s abs, I had to tell him:
they needed to get down there,
make some calls.
The best do not deserve the rest.
This was the Vatican for God’s sake.
*
It was funny; though large, the whole place
stuck me as homey, small in some way:
too many statues—even the huge courtyard
out front, which had always seemed
like all of history on tv. The stones there
felt gathered from backyards everywhere,
the whole show put together on the fly.
“We don’t have much money here,”
our young cleric said; and oddly enough,
that felt about right.
*
My son pointed out Cesena’s donkey ears,
Michelangelo’s droop: sheet of skin,
not smiling, hanging down—a four-year
penance from Julius II.
“Okay,” I had to admit.
“He may have revised.”
I use a tiny bowl for cereal
so I don’t eat too much,
but then I have a second helping.
This happens—so it must be metaphor:
a human being, tying to lose what won’t leave,
trying to catch what he can’t.
Either is on point, and both better
than the alternative, which is what happens
when one becomes—how else to put it—
contemporary?
Do they hide underneath my table
when forgotten: metaphors, I mean?
Do they finally make peace with the Easter Bunny,
the length of childhood? I like to think of them
under there with the dog, at the ready,
to play if all else fails. Or if else does not.
They are the bulbs on my Christmas tree,
make-up on a beautiful woman.
They are every day you’re not here!
But even if you were, that would only
be for a time, wouldn’t it? And then
the mundane takes over again, with all its
little jobs and goings. And that’s okay,
at least until I wake again, early,
listen to the heavenly shuffle.
I need to prepare a place for you, just in case
you arrive, and for me as well—
the one I’m happiest with.
Of course most of my days are spent
on family, making this cushion set right
for Sally, putting that train back on track
for Bill, watching the whole scene
with