Have mercy on me
O God
For I am fearfully
And wonderfully
Unmade.
I would be a saint,
Barefoot beggar of stones
Le Jongleur de Dieu,
Rebuilding Damien’s chapel
From the ground…
I would, but I am
The chapel half-ruined,
The wolf un-taught
Pietro, full of my own
Importance.
Posted in Poems
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April 26th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Edit: I originally titled this poem Juggling Stones, but thought up a better name some months later. The new title shouldn’t need any explanation. The title explained: St. Francis has sometimes been referred to as ‘Le Jongleur de Dieu” because he was really into French culture and also because he saw himself as a sort of travelling minstrel or jester (called Troubadours and Jongleurs in France). Jongleur is the word that became ‘Juggler’ in English. The ’stones’ in the title refer to a time when Francis went around Assisi begging for stones with which to rebuild the Church of St. Damien. And now I’ve probably wrecked the poem, but meh.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Saved me the trouble of asking
Or, uh, doing research or whatever.
Nice poem. Care to shed any light on the ‘wolf un-taught’ part? Sounds intriguing but is currently lost on me…
April 26th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Well, I have to confess it wasn’t really a deep metaphor, just a reference to an apocryphal story that fitted nicely ;p - you can read it here. And I just found a really interesting application of the story here.
Final research-discouraging comment: Pietro Bernardone was Frank’s dad, who had good reason for thinking his son was a bit unhinged.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Ahhh… I kept meaning to ask but forgot. Is a fantastic poem, you write beautifully