Among the monks was one who kept apart.
A gifted pray-er, they said of him,
who sensed my faith was mostly faith in art.
A man of fluent, fasted absences
that from his tongue would come as scalding psalms,
then yearlong silences of solid God.
A keeper of the ancient ways, they said,
(which I took to mean insane) who gleaned
between the hapless captive and the called;
and that no richer privilege could befall
a muddled soul than to receive his blessing.
For seven weeks he never met my eyes.
For seven itchy, unctuous, dyspeptic
and penitential weeks he kept me guessing
where he’d be, or if the long sighs
at Mass or matins were, somehow, for me.
How could he not become my avatar
of all things holy and opaque,
with his tonsured top and mortared neck,
his gravid aspect and air of scar,
but buoyant, too, as a battleship is buoyant,
with cello legs and a cello’s walk;
and a raucous root-vegetable face
out of Bruegel or Bosch.
Oh—and the eye that had offended—
or so I told myself—replaced
with one of weirdly faceted glass
that even in the candled chapel flashed
a lively dialogue with light.
Some spoke of healings from his hands.
Two brothers swore they saw him levitate.
But all I saw was somber truculence,
lord so-and-so and la-di-da (though once
he hawked an egg of snot into the grate).
Unlikely—that’s the word that came to mind,
like a concupiscent porcupine
(how proud I was of that one line!).
Still, I clung to what they claimed
and when the time for leaving came
sensed, rightly, that the time was mine.
He strode right up as if he knew me
and looking not so much at as through me
—as if I were a skull occluding sky—
leaned in close and whispered: Why?
And walked away.
I tried to laugh but only choked.
I tried to speak but had no voice.
The other monks all fawned and spoke
as if in fact some scathing grace
had driven me to my knees
and a self not mine had uttered Please
not knowing but knowing not to ask
if I was asking for fulfillment or release.
No. Just this pious pumpkin with his why.
Just this mild and unavailing I.
Just this low, mortar, mop-water void of sky.
I stumbled out. They closed the gate.
I didn’t know if I should weep or celebrate
but felt one clear imperative: do not forget.
I vowed a higher kind of have,
a something more than memory
fusing fact and faith, world and mind
so each particular might shine
until the whole disclosed its key.
But no: the very first step I took
took something from me—that communal chant
that seemed so sad—and away was all I had.
Those days of prayer and what I’d begged,
that pumpkin monk with his cello legs
(who in truth I have embellished),
the storm-colored cassocks and tempest beards
all vanished, everything except that why.
That’s real. Seared.
Oh—and the weird sight of his unseeing eye.

Read an interview with Christian Wiman on "the work of a poet."

Yulia Brodskaya, Melting, paper quilling, 2015. Used by permission.