18. SISTER WIGBERTA
Are there rulers to smack hands in Heaven?
Her faith said yes, yet she had doubts about cosmic injustice
but not about her calling: corporal punishment
That's why I'm here. We begged Christ to send her
to a back room in San Francisco, dressed
in a G string, pasties and chains--
Why should My children waste prayer-time on that,
since that's what I've already done?
No no no that's not what happened:
she went on to excoriate knuckles for years;
I went to business school and became
CEO of a huge unconcern--
No need for envy. Inside
I'm still an ant on a snowball in hell
with Sister Wigberta on skis.
19. WRITTEN ON THE WAY HOME
I might be broken, even shattered,
yet even shards that cannot reassemble
have, beyond entropy, one consolation:
the piece that can't be swept away;
nobody, not even God,
can trash what I actually am.
The difference between you and me
is that you, you lucky bastard,
are so strongly rooted in illusion
you imagine yourself lord of creation
and almost are--With the right equipment
you might soon found a new nation on Mars
and forget, till the next catastrophe,
you aren't immortal, but, like me,
glass underfoot, returning to sand.
No need to fear--
That innermost piece reflects every image
since the beginning--
Separation hurts; what doesn't?
Scission, what do you have to confess?
I guess I could have been a little bit better at self-realization.
(You excel at understatement)
Another: plain truths are so sad.
Just once let me feel my original face,
the uncreated countenance of--
Why are you laughing? Who's laughing?
I get it;
I'm laughing, too.
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