Quid hoc ad aeternitatem
Quid hoc ad aeternitatem, as old Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Used to mumble when faced with the usual parade of travail,
What does it matter in the light of eternity? And yet, and yet,
With total respect for eternity, don't you love your problems,
The smallness of them, the salt and roar of them, considering
The alternative? The blizzards of bills I can never pay in toto,
The surly son, the dismissive daughter, the wet shabby house,
The battered car, the shivering pains, the grim brooding debts,
The dark thread of fear that I might not have been a good dad,
The feeling sometimes that maybe there was a better husband
For my wife if only she had hung in the contest a little longer,
And the ones that haunt me every minute of the blessed week,
The health and joy of our kids, and the fragility of their future;
But there are great moments when I realise that all the muddle
Is so very much better than aeternitatem. Could it be that what
Keeps us awake at night are the greatest gifts we can ever get?
Just thinking. Because soon enough, as real time is accounted,
We'll be muttering Latin with Bernard, and what we will want
More than anything, even there, in the incomprehensible Light,
Is to be in a chair late at night, frightened, rocking a sick child.
Her hands on the shoulder of my coat
I am pretty sure but not totally sure that Mass in this town is at eleven,
So I shamble across the street from the motel and arrive neurotic early,
I hate to slide into Mass late and croak the door and get the death stare
From the old ladies, what is it about a head scarf that makes you mean,
And I wait for the crowd but only six people wander in and one leaves,
A man with a huge cowboy hat who kisses a woman and then basically
Runs down the aisle grinning, what in heaven's name is the story there,
But just then the lanky priest emerges and says in nomine Patris et Filii
Et Spiritus Sancti, and I realise this is a Latin Mass — the old Tridentine
Rite in which I was soaked as a boy. The old tongue is a physical shock.
I can feel the language like my mum's hands on the shoulder of my coat.
For an instant that no instrument will ever measure I am in the pew with
My dad sitting by the aisle because he will soon help with the collection,
And