Crocifisso di S. Giovanni Gualberto

Bearing sickness was sorely wanted
in a place of fashionable death
and the rent of his abjection. Bow
your head, inflamed contentions, clots
of reason bloodying the branched belief.
The road sears eyes, rasping to an end
respiratory battle of night, stillholding
Spiritus who grasps a shadowcloth;
still I fear to take you in my arms
swallowing ridicule before the masses
trip with a light step and a white robe.
Streets denying warfare, platitudes
surprise a deepening (we weren't to know)
the inexplicable invades the home—
count the rhymes I let you make,
cold bleat of eastor-in-the-dark;
face excruciates face.
My gaze is a remorsed bruise,
a breast swollen with empathic grief
incurve of fingers, candles, dames,
suffering beggars the frame.



Sarah Law | Mudlark No. 14
Contents | L'Adoration dei Magi