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need was at least as great as their own.

      VI

      How he escaped from the persecution of his father and relatives, living with the priest at the church of San Damiano, throwing the money on the window.

      Gauds—sold to Foligno, the family’s horse

      to help it in its acquisitive heave.

      Did things matter more than the time left?

      And tossing the world onto the sill, he collapsed

      under the weight of the wall.

      His father spread out beneath his table.

      Was God now asking for ten percent of his son too?

      Or had the fool gone off at another deep end?

      So Pietro left to find out just how strongly Francis stood.

      But when his son hid from the commandments,

      he irked: for exactly what life

      was this preparing him?

      Francis prayed hard that God

      who never showed Himself, would—

      just this once; days later finding courage

      in the only place it is ever offered: in darkness.

      If God were with him, after all,

      who could stand against?

      Many as it turned out. Mud flew in the streets.

      And so his father, again, only wanting his son

      to be a man, only wanting him to face his life,

      whatever his choices, returned.

      Finding only quiet, he collared the boy,

      tried to force him to stake out this place he had claimed;

      his son had to realize what is cost

      to live in the town square.

      Francis crowed he’d been freed

      by (a convenient) God’s grace

      (if you asked his father);

      and stacking all he did not possess:

      “Pietro di Bernadone is no longer my Father . . .”

      The ancient stone building

      collapsed in on itself. How could his favorite son

      so un-love him, a father who only asked

      that he stand up for himself, not against him

      when the time came.

      Led away, the old man clutched his son’s clothes,

      the Bishop covering Francis with the mantle of church,

      his father’s earnest hands

      with eight centuries of dirt.

      VII

      The hard work and fatigue involved in restoring the church of San Damiano and how he began to overcome himself by going out for alms.

      He praised God throughout the piazzas.

      What were they all waiting for, a written invitation?

      One had been issued centuries ago!

      Or would they all wait for death

      to rise up and be counted?

      Gathering the alms of the night, in heavy stones,

      Francis carried his future, his past:

      wet blisters, a stinging chorus.

      Many saw him as a Pharisee

      calling others the same—what was so new in the gospel

      that it had to be yelled across the squares?

      But others knew better: felt their collusion

      in his cracking bones—they who’d hung back

      in every meadow, spilling heaven like wine

      under stars, on cold earth.

      His father and half-brother came, but

      like puppets this time: where they lived, in ridiculous words

      they could never speak.

      One night he skirted his friends’ gambling

      debt, balked—at his cowardice.

      Then he forced himself, rushed to his knees, sharp dice,

      begging for the men’s (abashed) forgiveness.

      And rejecting a saving face, he stayed there

      for too long a time, flushing in the stupidity

      that was still saving his life.

Poems based on the Stigmata Section of the Fioretti

      I

      The first consideration of the holy stigmata

      (The mountain is offered)

      In the forty-third year of his Lord, this little man,

      bread for the birds, set off,

      (like us, but without our sense of direction).

      Oblivious, he joined the green-throated chorus,

      petal and pistil, him so sunk in his robe

      that you had to go through the smiles to find him.

      Earth was a place to be swept, cleaned: broom of dirt

      on a sea of dirt, dirt on dirt dancing.

      He wanted to be a dandelion spore, tiny

      piked pinwheel, silk with a snag, under the great wooden

      cart-like wheel of the stars.

      Orlando de Chiuse, though, needed his heart-rings numbered,

      the years having pushed his best years away.

      He saw and detested it, this told joke,

      this self, house of cards, shill under money’s glass.

      He knew his road too well:

      a topography of Lent, the burden of the strong—

      a collection plate feeding too many hands.

      “So great is the good I hope for, all pain delights me . . .”

      (This was a different time I should tell you.

      People listened. And each, in his own hearing,

      received the measure of his pain: small, like the wound

      at Jesus’ side, stretch and serous fluid,

      His labored breathing: the catch there in his ribs—steps,

      like an uneven playing field, each of your friends,

      one by one, leaving; just you in snake-skin boots,

      off the Trailways at the edge of this no-town—

      the abandoned gas station, ancient, rusty, shell-white pumps,

      the hot crackle of tall, dry grass, sting of grasshoppers

      as you walk through a field, duffle bag in hand.

      And finally, as you expected, the distant

      gathering of skyline, dark, across the southern

      Colorado plain: the throat of God.)

      Orlando wanted out of himself, whatever

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