Spring 2007 Issue

"Avignon, Anno Domini 1348" by Dan Sergeant

The priest will not bless her. He walked away,

Ave María grátia plen strangled

by the sleeve he held over his mouth.

The Holy Ghost, it seems, cannot reverse

the instinct for self-preservation.

At nine years old, she’s little more than sweaty

paper flesh in bundled rags – and yet

her weight sinks low his footsteps on the path

from church back home. A heaviness of spirit,

perhaps, made palpable in his arms.

Inside,

his wife is still in bed, her hair in braids

behind her head, her pouting lips, her lymph nodes

swelling bursting bleeding black, like coal

on snow skin. Crimson brushstrokes creep from corners

of nose and mouth, and he goes cold – they were

not there before. She is asleep; they’re both

asleep, but sleeping in a mimicry

of death - all limp and silent. Eyes do not

flutter, nor is there movement save the shallow breaths

that seem more ceremonial than real.

He does not know what lymph nodes are, of course, nor

yersinia pestis, nor the penicillin

that could wake them from their slumber. But

he knows this - he knows the sepulchral

sound of agony in the wind; he knows,

better than the blood, the curves of his

wife’s face; and he knows how to whisper screams

at Mass, where he walks through unvoiced fires, and

where he has heard the awesome silence of God.

The air is still and thick, the sunlight catches

dust and smoke like detritus of hope imploded.

Bodies he has seen collapse, and he

had thought he’d seen the same for faith, but he,

til now, had only seen it hollowed – the termite-

burrow emptiness, the leaking font

drained dry. This is panic boiling

the heart, the copper taste of bile in

the throat, the tightening noose around the skull.

This is collapse.

He lays at bedside porridge,

a leaf or two of brown cabbage, some wine

and gently shuts the door. Now he is finished.

He starts to pray for forgiveness (for old

habits die slow) but stops himself. Instead

he stoops down low and gathers up his words

and slowly flings them, stone-like, to the dark.