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“From my secret
sins cleanse me, O Lord...”
“If they shall
have no dominion over me, then shall I be without spot...”
(Gradual, Tuesday, third week of Lent, Missale Romanum, 1962)
Confessed
and splinted though with slide-tongue ease,
Shambling
close-facedly among close-faced men,What’s purged if which-way whispers on one’s knees
Misclaim remission, clouding what and when?
Intestined cant, revanchist like disease,
Slips fiat with its good-face “now or then?”
The tabernacle doors creak shut on grease
And side-glanced indirection tugs again.
Long years or moments later, stung by death,
Respectable, untruthful, spot with sins,
Sifted by lightning one can not repel,
All secrets blatant like a cloud of breath
Stinking to the All in which all begins,
Pit-doomed, how many fall, tolled by a bell?
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© January 2015
