IN ASISSI

Submitted by AWL on 25 July, 2008 - 5:29 Author: Sean Matgamna

IN ASISSI

Midst the avarice and sanctity
In Asissi, white in sun and years,
Two flushed, pale-bloused, young-breasted girls,

Their mouths half-open, smiling, watch
Two pidgeons fucking in the sun.

Breath held in Francis-empathy,
Delighted, knowing hands entwined,
Unconsciously at one, they catch
Life fired by the pantheistic sun.

And then, their eyes cloud and drop,
As the shade-faced, fussing shepherd nun
Comes at a dry stiff trot — cast down
Like the dead saint's communistic friends
Who broke the sacredotal line,
To set life over property.

They burned in priest-set fires, whose minds
Too soon had seen a precious sight:
Who saw as true as the children see
These pidgeons loving in the light.

(WL Sept '97)

[St Francis of Asissi, who might be describes as a pantheistic primitive communist, preached, in the early 13th Century, poverty, the community of all life and the love of all living things, Divesting himself of property, he alligned himself with the poor.Some of his co-thinkers who refused to soften the ideas they had shared with Francis, ideas which might have been developed in the direction of revolutionary social conclusions, were persecuted as heretics. Franciscan friars are today a strong, world-wide Catholic religious order.]

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