Closing Parishes in Boston
The Church accountants are preparing sales,
lock, stock and altar. Carpenters install
antennas on our spire, remove the nails
that fastened Jesus to our sun-washed wall,
and fill old window frames with plexiglass,
a transubstantiation of lost grace.
Church spokesmen blame headcounts of Sunday Mass
as if there were no history to face.
Law veiled child rape with lies. We strain to pray,
to trap some saint who eases rage in times
of ruptured trust, to stagger toward that day
when faith may force forgiveness of their crimes,
but hammering goes on with steady violence,
an urgent knocking in unholy silence.
The first question I asked myself about “Closing” was,
“Can this poem redeem that daring use of the word ‘history’
at the end of the octet”? The poet has set off fire-alarms,
but I admire the way the trucks respond. The pun on “Law”
is especially bold, since that is the actual name of the Boston cardinal involved. An unsettling subject handled with
dignity and forthrightness—and, like all the sonnets I’m
commenting on in the nine picked, with great technical skill
(no clichés, trite phrasing, clumsy meter, or stilted
inversions, etc.). I might have turned “rages” to “rage,”
and “their” in line 12 threatens to become an untethered
pronoun looking for its antecedent, but those are very
minor quibbles.
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Threaded Mode
