There’s an art
to everything. How
the rain means
April and an ongoing-ness like
that of song until at last
it ends. A centuries-old
set of silver handbells that
once an altar boy swung,
processing . . . You’re the same
wilderness you’ve always
been, slashing through briars,
the bracken
of your invasive
self. So he said,
in a dream. But
the rest of it—all the rest—
was waking: more often
than not, to the next
extravagance. Two blackamoor
statues, each mirroring
the other, each hoisting
forever upward his burden of
hand-painted, carved-by-hand
peacock feathers. Don’t
you know it, don’t you know
I love you, he said. He was
shaking. He said,
I love you. There’s an art
to everything. What I’ve
done with this life,
what I’d meant not to do,
or would have meant, maybe, had I
understood, though I have
no regrets. Not the broken but
still flowering dogwood. Not
the honey locust, either. Not even
the ghost walnut with its
non-branches whose
every shadow is memory,
memory . . . As he said to me
once, That’s all garbage
down the river, now. Turning,
but as the utterly lost—
because addicted—do:
resigned all over again. It
only looked, it—
It must only look
like leaving. There’s an art
to everything. Even
turning away. How
eventually even hunger
can become a space
to live in. How they made
out of shamelessness something
beautiful, for as long as they could.
I found the poem here.
I've been thinking about Brother Cesare Bonizzi, the heavy metal monk, since yesterday's blog post. Yesterday's post was titled 'Mentoring' for a reason. There's a laundry list of things I'd like to learn from him. He's fearless. Oh, I'm sure he has some fear. But how much fear can a 62 year old monk who performs heavy metal music ON STAGE have? He's ageless. In our culture, most 62 year olds have bought the recliner that they intend to die in. Not only is Cesare listening to a genre of music that is almost exclusively enjoyed by youth... he's SINGING it! He's in integrity. Cesare's work as a brother and his passion for metal seem to be in integrity. Here's a type of music that is often judged to be evil, and he's incorporating it into his life and work, making it holy.
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