With Mercy For The Greedy

For my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession.

Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear the Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose-

I pray to its shadow
that gray place
where it lies on your letter..deep,deep
I detest my sins and try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is
a beautiful Jesus
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!
But I can't. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long
I have worn
your cross, hung with package string around my throat
It tapped me lightly as a child's heart might
tapping secondhand, waiting softly to be born.
Ruth, I cherish the letter that you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are;
with mercy
for the greedy,
They are the tongue's wrangle
the world's pottage, the rat's star.

(1962)