Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

ARTS AND CULTURE

A taste for sainted meat

  • 02 September 2008

Four poems about Francis of Assisi

Open mic: hear Grant Fraser read his four poems about Francis of Assisi, live from the Eureka Street studio. Listen

1. Sistered by Death

For some there are vanities that rise up as rags, And declare their holy poverty to the world; For others, language is a dazzling vestment Worn close to the skin; But you, Francis, kept your words and your poverty At a sacred distance, so that in each dawn, You could rise like a swimmer And breach the water afresh, Hair bubbling with curls.

And thus, in the time that you made your own, You could seek the light of life in a swaying viper's eyes, Know that in the curving of a thorn Begins the poem of the rose, And hear amongst the best of birdsong A small motet of crows.

In all that you astounded, so you confounded, Until, at the end, you lay down upon the earth, And, sistered by death, simply shed your life, Lay inert, Espoused to dust, As quiet as lightning.

2. St Francis and the Leper's kiss

And oh the Leper waits within the silence of a child; The dulled edges of his universe are like a balm of air: he is unstung by any frost, indifferent to all crackling fire. And Francis comes, a pale faced young man, Head roughly shaved, down at heel. He bears a Demon on his back which breathes a fog into Francis' eyes, Burdens him, Hobbles his knees, stoops his heart. The Demon has the face of a saint. The Leper reaches for his bell, But as the young man approaches A great sigh comes from him, And, rising up from his stooped demeanour, He flings the Demon from his back And sheds the shining carapace Which falls like a cloak to the ground. And Francis, older than he first appeared, His pale face coursed by time, leans to the Leper, And reaching his arm about the shoulders of the Leper, Pauses to look closely into his face, Then kisses his proffered cheek, Its grey meticulous skin.

3. The Falling

When you fell from the grace of the world You were lost to its cool linens, Its glamour of steel, Its ancestries of faith and hope, And its promises of death made comfortable In ossuaries of patterned bones.

When you fell, at the first, you were undone: You were a moth inside a bell Soundlessly dusting the bronze, A worm on stone Yawning convulsions to the sun.

Then you fell into The yield of your life And began to bell the sounds Of all those stranger words That shimmer within the grammar of Christ: To love beyond reckoning, To forgive audaciously, To make of poverty an act of grace.

4. Saint Francis and the Wolves

Saint Francis