Theology

(All Saints' Mass)

Michael Quilty

Theology (All Saints' Mass)

Michael Quilty

For Jakub Bachorz -- who died in 1985, at age 3 months, as a result of a mysterious post-industrial poison.

Rain in Poland: template of tissue and weathering, age.

The frame of culpability rising from the grey: at my side

Jola kneels towards innocence,

her clasped adolescent faith seeking that state of knowing

what we cannot know. Wind, priests, psalms

crackling through loudspeakers sensing time's indelible bolt.

Candles in yellow flutes, flowers revered and blowing,

a hallowed morn behaving like the ghost of familiarity--earth, sleet, and flesh.

Beneath this white stone an infant brother

imprisoned by his country's blood. Solemnity acting on its own,

depriving humanity of any cause, complicity.

Jola lowers her eyes, doesn't notice the light

between the clouds behind an altar,

the flickers of dampness from the tombs of the living.

Rain in Poland, age: template of skulls and follicles.