Here, among the rosary-tellers,
he feels at claustrophobic home
in a way he never does in the
English-speaking parishes.
It’s in the bones, the blood, the brain,
and he doesn’t have to like it to accept it.
He folds a pair of bills into the box
stenciled for the cathedral’s upkeep and restoration.
It’s leaning to the west like a flower following the sun
and if it leans too far it’ll slide and tumble
and drown in the subterranean lakes
that have never fully been drained.
At least that’s what the free color-brochure has to say,
appealing to several fears, a single hope.
He lights a candle, crosses himself,
says an apostate’s prayer to Mary
Star of the Sea in lieu of Him;
three candles from the same match,
which might be bad luck at night, in trenchtime,
but translates as love within these walls.
A candle each for the good Catholic taken by AIDS,
for the rock and roller taken by cancer,
for the collage-artist left violated and strangled
within sight of Kennedy Center so many long years ago
that he feels he is the great-grandson
of that boy who was her friend.
Around him the Mass is celebrated
in a stagger, an overlap,
that affectionate Roman confusion
grounded in its forty-five minutes of little miracles,
the divine brought into focus like beads on a string,
in a sinner’s space, a sinner’s time.
The line of well-behaved tourists moves
parallel to the line outside the confessional
and a chubby Scandinavian girl pretends to be
confused as to which parade she’s part of.
Even here no daydream dissipates in smoke
without the erotic vocabulary whispering down
like conspiracy revealed. Eros has his own agenda,
plucking favorite phrases from consecration and penance,
pausing at the poor-box to cheat some sin out of its measly coin.