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Saints and Days

 

by

Peter Hainsworth

 

Backaleg 2018

Email: backaleg@gmail.com

Contents

Simeon Stylites, January 5

John the Almsgiver, January 23

Don Bosco, January 31

Peter Damian, February 21

Polycarp, February 23

Cuthbert, March 20

Martin I, April 13

Athanasius, May 2

Madrun, June 9

Romualdo, June 19

Mary Magdalen, July 22

Botvid, July 28

Tatwin, July 30

Ignatius Loyola, July 31

Ethelwold, August 1

Etheldritha, August 2

Oswald, August 5

Sixtus, August 6

Gaetano, August 7

Dominic, August 8

Romanus, August 9

Radegund, August 13

Maximilian Kolbe, August 15

Agapitus, August 18

Drithelm, September 1

Disibod, September 8

Peter Claver, September 9

Hugh of Lincoln, November 17

Clement, November 23

Catherine of Alexandria, November 25

Lucy, December 13

Venantius Fortunatus, December 14

Saints and Days

 

 

Simeon Stylites 

January 5

The aim is to get above yourself. Recipe:

first live four years out on a small platform

fixed firmly atop a nine-foot high pillar,

then up it to eighteen feet for three years,

and then it’s ten years at thirty-three feet.

Lastly let your admirers build you sixty

feet of column and stay up twenty years.

 

How little they look, how needful they are

for you to manage up and above them!

You are absorbed in prayer and penitence

standing, bending, sitting, getting up, lying,

joining and unjoining the hands, and bending

standing, lying, getting up, sitting, hands

together and apart, except in Lent

you make the routine more intense. No stops

or slowing down then to drop a few words

of homely paraenesis in the straining

all but blocked up ears down there below you.

 

People brought you unwanted food and drink

which you pulled up in a basket. What waste

came from your shrivelled body just, I guess,

flew off. Anyway your small dirt was holy

and your high odours above human noses.

 

Now it’s common in our part of the world

to stay up pillars for a lifetime eating

and drinking and doing unusual things.

Now those below run from pillar to pillar

with greens, meat, fruit, cereals, cheese and sugar,

with coffees, omelettes and scrumptious cakes,

without which we would plummet to our deaths.

Some of them have scrambled into our baskets,

and some of us think it’s a long way down.

 

Maybe you’re happily sitting, Simeon,

on some unbelievable height, and now

and then you might just lean over a moment

and pull some breathless soul up after you.

John the Almsgiver 

January 23

Dear John the Almsgiver, I wonder why

you kept back any money or any land,

or given you just kept giving, which was grand,

maybe too much gushed out to be run dry.

 

Everyone who asked or needed got a hand,

gits, paupers, merchants, the broken and the fly,

monks, the pregnant, those about to die.

No sorting out, nothing to understand.

 

The messes came from sex clogging the air,

and heresies that pushed in for a fight,

and bloody heathens chortling everywhere.

 

Let’s just say a gift given you was to see

how just keeping on giving was more right

than backing off or dumping it could be.

 

Accept I beg my gratefulness to you

for granting us this little interview.

Don Bosco

January 31

wunnav like you Don Bosco

purring yr ans on me ed

n smilin dow,

wunnav like you Don Bosco

gerrin me ter pray

n sin out low,

wunnav like you Don Bosco

makin me appy n canny

like you all time

wunnav like lisnin ter you fer ours,

wunnav like bin fotograbbed wi you

clin n oally oly,

wunnav like plain fubbol wi you,

wunnav like you Don Bosco,

mekkin me a prees,

wunnav like you Don Bosco

sennin me to ChilliPru

ter preas,

wunnav like you Don Bosco

gerrin me ter wor n smy

like you all time,

wunnav like lernin ter ree and ry,

wunnav like bin goo

wunnav like any un like you

clin n oally oly

wunnav like you larkin wi me,

wunnav like you Don Bosco

runnin affer me

like I wer a booa fly Don Bosco

you ed ter kapper

ter kapper mi sol,

wunnav bin kapper

wu av die n you wu av die

wun like gon wi you ter evven,

wun like you sinnin n prain,

clin and oally oly,

like you wun ever leggo mi las lil bi,

wunna go now, OK?

ow, you hurz, dum bo.

(I wouldn’t have liked you, Don Bosco, putting your hands on my head and smiling down. I wouldn’t have liked you , Don Bosco, getting me to pray and sin(g) out loud/ low, I wouldn’t have liked you, Don Bosco, making me happy and canny, like you, all the time, I wouldn’t have liked listening to you for hours, I wouldn’t have liked being photographedwith you, clean and totally holy, I wouldn’t have liked playing football

with you.

 

I wouldn’t have liked you, Don Bosco, making me a priest, I wouldn’t have liked you sending me to Chile and Peru, to preach, I wouldn’t have liked you Don Bosco, getting me to work and smile like you all the time, I wouldn’t have liked learning to read and write, I wouldn’t have liked being good, I would have liked anyone like you, clean and totally holy, I wouldn’t have liked you larking with me.

I wouldn’t have liked you, Don Bosco, running after me, like I was a butterfly, Don Bosco, that you had to capture, to capture my soul, I wouldn’t have been captured, I would have died and you would have died, I wouldn’t like going with you to heaven, I wouldn’t like you singing/ sinning and praying, clean and totally holy, like you wouldn’t ever let go of my last little bit, I want to go now, OK? Ow, you’re hurting, dumbo.)

Peter Damian 

February 21

‘Could God recook the sort of hash our history has made?

You bet your life he can since he cooks what he wants, but you

just keep your little fingers out of his best angel delight.

 

Stick with down-to-earth stuff, for instance, what’ll happen

to your soul if it’s sprung wriggling from the trap of flesh and fancy

and served up on the judgement table, dirty, fearful, uninviting.

 

No point then in wishing you’d dipped all your life in holy water,

or mumbling sorry, blaming mummy, asking for ten minutes more,

no, it’s over and they’re waiting down there grinning open-mouthed.

 

Down there’s the hopeless hoohah which I only recommend,

if you really fancy out-of-this world grilled soul;

oh how you’ll ooze and crackle, we won’t hear it, but you will,

 

and you’ll screech out for a dousing in the arid flickering dark,

where you baste in your own juices and are never thrown away,

on the fire that sears as much for ever as it first seared the day

 

your heart hoped for one more spasm, your mouth groped for a groan,

and then the precious timer tinkled going, going, gone.

Oh staring eye, oh wooden lid, let both be shuttered down.

 

But there’s a different menu which I’d say you ought to like,

served under mellow lighting to the music of the spheres,

where your soul will be the diner and the dishes are divine.

 

For instance, endless tarts of love meticulously ranged

on shining plates of truth that stay unblemished and replete

though passed round time on time and after time has passed.

 

And goodnesses and wisdoms and beauties for all tastes

that the eternal chef whisks up with understanding eyes

smiling at all the customers for his eternal feast,

 

their appetites as happy and their palates as surprised

as when the cheerful waiters, who pulled and pushed them free,

first settled them in comfort and gently whispered, ‘Eat’.!

You’ve seen the adverts, heard the warnings, still you’re here,

waiting as if what has been has to be, and as if what will be

is being cooked up to be much as it was, not worse,

 

when you could stir yourself afresh. But frozen stock like yours

needs drops of the pure spirit to dissolve.’

                                                                        In later years

St Peter Damian also took pleasure carving spoons.

Polycarp 

February 23

 

Polycarp, at eighty-six, was up to 

being eaten by a lion in front 

of those Smyrna fans shouting ‘Atheists 

out’. He was with them on that one, he said,,

but he wouldn’t turn down the old friend 

who’d stuck by him and he hoped to see shortly.

 

Germanicus, who was old too, but just 

gristle, walked over to a lion, which 

bit out his edible bits and ate them

in two shakes. Then Quintus, who was tenderer,

came over faint and signed the pledge, poor soul. 

It was a big disappointment, and when

 

impromptu the governor pronounced that

lions was off forthwith, those Smyrna fans 

started roaring and smashing, as they do. 

‘Well,’ said the governor getting judicious,

‘have a fire then,’ at which they calmed down pronto,

and everyone ran and got bits of wood.

 

Polycarp said he’d dreamt of a good fire, 

and walked up and sat himself on the pile 

smiling, though they tied him for the show’s sake. 

‘I’m hoping,’ he told them, ‘to be a fat 

and acceptable sacrifice.’ And then

the fire was lit and they all stood there

 

enjoying the unanticipated turn.

Scholars don’t know how fat Polycarp was,

but the flames curved round him like a ship’s sail

filled by the wind. He looked and smelled as good

as really good bread baking, and some there

caught now and then wafts of superior spices. 

 

An official tested how he was doing

with a dagger on a stick, and a dove

flew out of the wound, followed by enough 

blood to put out the fire, which does suggest

he was a man of some size. Bigger than

any of us dodderers here, I’d guess.

Cuthbert 

March 20

 

Well, I never, it’s our Cuthbert,

grandest, shyest northern saint,

back all shiny like his name.

Yoo-hoo, long lost happy Cuthbert,

leave eternal bliss a minute,

come for a cuddle over here.

 

You who ambled round the northland,

charming with reforms and wonders,

you who left off bishoping 

for Lindisfarne and Inner Farne,

you who shared fish with an eagle,

oats with crows and love with ducks.

 

You who dug a cell with angels

and opened it to friendly souls,

you who’d run and jumped and tumbled,

ran and jumped beyond your legs,

and rotten feet and puffy hams

bounced to heaven through pain and prayer. 

 

Why bother with a final onion?

Herefrid was there to wash you,

and Walstod, who had diarrhoea,

came just in time for you to stop it.

Then you set off from the goodness

and the beauty of the earth.

 

You who left your friends a body,

that was still as fresh as ever

for eight hundred years or so,

till the faith around it crumbled,

you who faded from our vision

in your vision of delight.

 

That bliss is that sweet and strong

he can’t tear himself away,

funny how he stays clear-headed,

drinking like that long past time.

But, I’d say, just now he also

turned and managed us a smile.

Martin I

April 13

 

 

What man are you, Martin, if you don’t speak

up? With monothelites, Constans, the Typus,

squeezing their evils around everything,

what could be said for silence? Only that

it would have been the really human thing,

and after all how many cared or care?

But no, you went theandric and the divine

bit then crossed back across the wavering line

into Santa Maria Maggiore and 

the Romans breathed it in and broke out clapping. 

Figures of speech, transient figures that might 

be waiting breathless somewhere to return.

 

The body came back all right; Calliopas

arrived to call you to Constantinople.

A man set on submission, you sailed off

to months of dirt and dysentery, then 

came chains, jeering, flogging – yes, you were lucky, 

we’d say now, to survive. Which meant you were

sent off to the Crimea, more filth plus famine.

Your letters (seventeen survive) complain

you’ve been forgotten back in long-lost Rome

by those whose souls you keep on praying for.

Last of the martyr popes, still witnessing

are you, evils being coiled around us too?

 

 

Athanasius 

May 2 

 

Let’s say one for Athanasius, who repelled

the logic splitters and the splinterers of 

the unity of action, thought and love,

one for Athanasius, who upheld

 

the innocence from which we were expelled,

who gave expedience and lust the shove

and kept one eye down here and one above,

one for the real and perfect meld,

 

that took in the full mess that it had made,

as well as all the good bits out on show,

and bit the bitterest in the pot and paid,

 

thinking that there was nothing else to do.

And Athanasius wanted us all to know

and say with him the all he said and knew.

 

One or two shells still have some echoes in them:

best shake them in your ears before you bin them.

 

 

 

 

Madrun

June 9

 

 

Saint Madrun, you’re being most elusive, you are,

with the three kids you had to run off with,

having looked after Tathan, that Irish missionary,

(Tathaeus), and thus to Trwfynydd you went.

 

Were you Vortimer’s daughter,

the one married to the great Ynir Gwent,  

with that brother Vortigern who got slaughtered?

 

You fled to Cornwall and that’s all there is to it, 

except in Trwfynydd they remembered 

you for centuries. Unless it was Materiana,

who arrived in Cornwall with Brican et al.

In Madrun they remembered Madernus or Madron,

also long gone, not you Saint Madrun,

little lost zipper into eternity.

I’m trying to run you up and down,

trailing the scrunched wonder of your virtue. 

April 9th might also be the day for you,

October 19th, which is also Ethbin’s or Egbin’s, too.

Ah the fugitive, now she’s flown.

 

Romualdo

June 19

 

Romualdo stomped up and down Italy

acting the cheerful action-monk,

temporarily

slapping sloppy King Otho into shape,

temporarily 

yanking his mad dad out

of his murderous gloom,

and again and again and again

jabbing at the fatted Benedictines

who arose at dawn and dusk

to mouth exquisite hymns.

 

Then he stomped off to try to save Slavs

for a while,

then it was back to stomping up and down Italy

for a while,

until Maldolus gave him a field

in wildest Tuscany

to put a hut up in

where he could help his fans 

sort their souls out.

 

‘Just sit and watch

your thoughts swimming up like fishes

and then swimming away,’

he said. ‘Just keep on singing 

the Psalms and thinking 

what each word is singing.

If you wander, go back

and start singing again.

This is Paradise and you’re

up before its Emperor,

chicks with an empty tum,

waiting for the mother-hen

and the only seed you can eat.’

 

That lasted a good few years.

Then off on his own he stomped 

to a shack he hid

deep in the high mountain-wood.

There he sang and waited

emptily, except for

that smidgeon of the divine company 

that surely turned up

and finally carried him happily

over the hump.

 

 

 

Mary Magdalen

July 22

 

She looks so good in pictures,

with those long loose waves of hair

curling and falling over her flesh;

her soft lips part in prayer,

and tears glisten

in her heavenly eyes.

Do not touch

makes her the lovelier.

 

And the flesh rises and asks again

for playtime, wonders

why it should ever have been gainsaid,

careless of droops and cankers.

 

The skull on the chair,

the jar of oil, the lamp,

the discarded pearls and mirror,

are there just to adorn her. 

 

And the gardeners, prostitutes, 

perfumers and hairdressers

do not look now to those rarer images

of the shrivelled haggard doll,

trying to push through the crowds,

for help.

 

Large and calm in Arezzo, 

in her robe of chiselled green

and cloak of carved white and russet,

Mary Magdalen holds out her lamp

(its flame hiding behind the thick glass)

as if it were a weightless gift

to herself and whoever is looking.

Her neck is strong, her face youthful,

her hair a bit untidy,

and her eyes half-closed.

They seem to reflect back on the world below

unalterable concern,

and her rueful lips might at any moment

sketch out a smile and speak:

So much world has to be let go, but there’s 

still so much that you couldn’t expect,

even for you, my poor friends.

 

 

Botvid

July 28

 

Swedish Bodvid

got saved in England

and sailed back to Sweden 

to help saving Swedish souls,

with a mulch of good words:

Glug a dee, glug a doo.

 

But charity needs to grow,

and he bought himself a Finn,

whom he saved and set free

to help save and free more 

mired Finnish souls.

Glug a dee, glug a doo.

 

The two and a mate

took a boat and rowed off

on the thick Baltic waters.

for the forests and lakes of Finland,

lost in their summer rest,

wick with pagan buzz.

Glug a dee, glug a doo.

 

En route the Finn did the others in

and rowed vigorously on,

and Botvid’s saving ended

in the story of a bird guiding

his friends to the bodies 

with its droppings of song:

Glug a dee, glug a doo.

 

Maybe you could still dig up 

one verse or another,

one relic or another of bone,

in Botkyrka, if you poked about

in the mud by the church

for something to save.

Glug a dee, glug a doo.

 

Tatwin

July 30

 

Enigmatic Tatwin, the Canterbury riddler,

pious, prudent, and bookish in the wild 8th century,

also did miracles (or so they said),

though now he is undoubtedly unprayed to.

 

He once imagined himself a marvellous being

with two big arms and gaping jaws, 

who could face any obstacle

however hard or rough or hot, 

and intrepidly grasp it in his tongs

and hold onto it till it crumbled 

to nothingness. 

 

He knew all along

he was putting up a piddling fight with evil,

but rated the humility that he felt afterwards 

a substantial success,

which any honed and hungry hardman

finds truly unbelievable,

as you don’t need me to tell you.

 

 

 

Ignatius Loyola 

July 31

 

Old hopalong Loyola

could be a person

worth meeting on a dark night of the soul,

swinging his exercise book over your head

to light you through desolation

(via immolation if need be),

obedient and consoled.

 

Look at the persons on the face of the earth killing, going to Hell, etc.

Look at the Divine Persons working out the Incarnation, etc.

Look at the Angel doing what an ambassador should.

Look at the Virgin being humble and grateful.

Then think about it.

 

A person who is old or weak

or one who has weakened from week one

might in week two

omit the midnight contemplation,

and just do the morning, mass, and before lunch sessions, 

with a repetition round Vespers,

and then the Application of the Senses before supper.

 

Oh Ignatius, Ignatius,

you were not unlovable or impatient,

and tonight it’s spicy focaccia and lustrous Côte du Rhône.

Ooh, yes.

 

 

 

Ethelwold 

August 1

 

Pow! 

 

It was always all go with Ethelwold, 

with rebuilding and reviving,

with aqueducts, walls, illuminations, 

and the new polyphonic music,

with tutoring and counselling,

copying and reading,

translations of rules and relics,

and then

the biggest organ in the country

(two players, four hundred pipes and thirty-six bellows),

oh, he was, they said, the father of monks, 

and the missionaries went off into Scandinavia

and Abingdon and Winchester and all of South England

sang.

 

And he cooked,

and was up working on the scaffolds,

till he fell and broke his ribs, 

that was our Ethelwold,

the energiser, the uncomfortable,

the unsleepy.

 

He was given the tonsure 

by St Alphege the Bald -

a reminder that some parts are

to be kept bare and spare,

even if you can’t see them.

(But I imagine him polishing and polishing

with some adventitious rag 

as he was rushing round

till his pate like pewter shone.)

 

 

 

 

Etheldritha 

August 2

 

Think about Etheldritha,

who was not dejected when her father the king

slew her intended, but withdrew 

into the Lincolnshire marshlands,

as she knew she would.

 

She prayed and prophesied 

in her hermitage for forty years

and then she died,

as she knew she would.

 

Papery hands come together,

the jaws sketch an all but toothless smile

and there is an off-putting smell -

the sweetish odour of sanctity

that seemed to have finally dispersed

after eight-hundred or so years,

five-hundred or so years ago.

 

 

 

Oswald 

August 5

 

Oswald and his chums went walloping through the North,

chopping the pagans down to the ground,

including Cadwallon, the worst of the horrible,

and blood ran in rivers and victory shone

and Oswald had signed Heavenfield with his cross.

 

A fine-looking fellow who ruled and prayed fiercely,

who gave to the poor and united his kingdom.

When the pagans of Mercia came walloping back

and blood ran in rivers at Salop, then he at his falling 

bawled a prayer for the chums tumbling into the dark,

He was chopped into pieces and his head and arms hung

out to dry on a tree for Woden to wiggle.

 

But the head stayed as good and as fresh as before,

and it and the other bits were, people found,

preternaturally active as well as intact -

particularly the splendid Peterborough arm,

under permanent watch in its purpose-built chapel.

And even the dirt of the ground where he died

worked minor wonders. From Bardney to Bamberg,

from Carlisle to Carinthia, he’d drop back in to help.

 

‘God gemiltsa urum sawlum’, ‘Deus miserere animabus’;

old words for us who depute our walloping and chopping,

and live on for now in the half-light of unwonder, St Oswald.

Sixtus

August 6

 

Pope Sixtus took the point that heretics were not all evil

and even those who disagreed

had to admire his firm tranquillity,

 

the more so when the soldiers came for him

and his deacons preaching just off the Appian Way. 

He would have taken the point of their swords too

but in fact they cut off their heads –

gurgle, gush and snap.

 

Get ready, cheer up, think of the immortality

but whatever you do don’t worship the gods

they insist any reasonable person puts up with –

so said St Cyprian, who a few months later

put his own head where his mouth had been.

 

Why do I see only shaking heads and knees,

my own being particularly wobbly?

 

 

 

 

Gaetano 

August 7

 

You launched the Forty Hour Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament,

the Oratory of Divine Love,

and the Congregation of Clerks Regular or Theatines.

The syllables still float through the deep columnar gloom.

 

But the Virgin did appear to you, 

the second time when you were dying,

which must have buoyed you up.

 

You have become the patron of gamblers, 

the unemployed and job-seekers,

some of whom must also rise more lightly

if they sink upon their knees’ despair

and stay there whispering madly to you for a while.

 

 

 

 

Dominic

August 8

 

 

The picture shows black and white dog with torch.

It’s in a fog through which it’s trying to lead

some clever visitors who think they 

are taking it for an outing.

 

What did you do when the fires started

in Provence, hound-dog? Not just walk about in the smoke

talking to the barbecued,

and the happy holidaymakers cooking them.

 

No, you were a reading and singing dog,

a writing, thinking doctor-dog,

who also painted the fired-up devotees,

poor souls becoming angelic.

 

Woof, you try, woof, and I can just make you out

shaking an old newspaper in your jaws

as if its news can be kept burning.

 

 

 

 

Romanus 

August 9

 

You are just known as Romanus, just about known, I mean,

no wonder (I say ruefully) I don’t know what to say

when you turn up this morning,

indifferent looking with a tab saying ‘good’ 

on one side and ‘soldier’ on the other.

You certainly will not be amazed by any excuse

after close on twenty centuries 

of slipshod irony and dumb insolence,

 

you who handed in your rights as citizen and soldier,

together with your name,

for the whole lot to be torn up with your body,

the recoup anticipated in heaven,

where there is no anonymity for anyone

and everyone is at their best.

Radegund

August 13

 

In the end Radegund managed to get herself away from 

her horrid husband (the king) and into her nunnery,

where she and her sweet companions

sewed and sang and copied and read and prayed, 

outsiders who stayed just a little in touch with the insiders, 

e.g. the Emperor, from whom she managed to extract 

relics and jewelled gospels and a bit of the Cross too,

which pilgrims came from all Franconia to see.

 

It was overwhelming and at last she managed to get herself

walled up in her cell to pray and meditate.

That lasted for a decade or more - not a world record,

but I can manage five minutes at most on a good day, 

and only a little more on a bad one.

 

Her nuns lined up on the nunnery walls wailing

when her body was borne out beneath them.

It was a grand send-off, with Gregory of Tours officiating,

even if they couldn’t help wanting her back 

from Paradise now she had finally got past all

the fripperies they too would soon have to leave behind.

Maximilian Kolbe

August 15

 

It’s pretty unexciting stuff,

this shopping, this going to the dentist’s 

this gardening. The switches of sun and rain are unpredictable,

but there seems not much to be said about them in the end,

or maybe I’m just not looking enough.

 

You found something to say, Maximilian,

when everyone was stripped down

and had to see what it was impossible to refuse or waylay -

not much to be said about that either.

 

Were the ones you talked with

(gaunt, sleepless, shivering, afraid etc)

were they consoled?

Did the words console you?

Could everyone hide in them a while?

 

The dark abominable voice 

snakes up, I think, and coils round all of us sometime,

but you took it in your hand

(did it tremble terribly?

was it mortally still?)

and exposed an iridescent throat,

that became truly your own.

 

How can I say that?

How can I say that as the knife came down yet again

the dove was reborn and flew away singing?

 

 

 

Agapitus 

August 18

 

The sword crossing your neck 

was an angel’s wing, I guess, 

which dipped fiercely down

into your blood and then rose

just as implausibly, bearing

your soul balanced like an egg

on the tip of an unheard feather.

 

What a bet to make

when you are fifteen 

and the plumes are shimmering

and the music has to be loud!

 

For years they thought

you alighted intact

and then hatched into perfect song.

What fools they must have been!

But not necessarily wrong.

 

 

 

 

Drithelm 

September 1

 

Your soul left your sick body one evening

and then in the morning came back babbling.

No wonder everyone ran off,

except for the wife, though she was terrified too.

 

A shining guide showed you round

- first souls hopping from ice to fire,

from fire to ice, hoping for paradise,

then it was dark fog and a large, smelly hole,

from which bubbled balls of black fire, and screeches, and laughter,

and devils with tongs who came after you,

but your guide chased them off and took you

to a walled flower-garden where young people in white 

were singing together in sunshine, waiting for the big day,

and after that it brightened up even more and you actually 

sniffed the fragrance of heaven and heard its music.

 

You gave everything away,

except for your story, which you kept back 

from the bored, layabout public,

saved it for the few real enthusiasts -

people like King Alfred, Bishop Ethelwald, 

and Hemgils the hermit, who told it to Bede and then left

for an old age of coarse bread, cold water and solitude in Ireland.

 

You stayed fasting and praying in Northumbria.

You’d stand up to your neck in the river and pray,

breaking the winter ice to pray there, if need be, 

and drying yourself after only with sunlight.

‘Tha can fair thoil t’ cowd,’ they’d say. 

‘Ah’ve seen war,’ you’d say.

‘But tha’s fair moithering thissen,’ they’d say. 

And you, ‘Ah’ve seen war.’

 

You were, wrote Bede, a man of much simplicity and indifferent wit,

who forwarded the salvation of many. 

 

 

 

Disibod 

September 8

 

You walked out of holy Ireland because it wasn’t,

walked with your mates into the exile

we are all shuffling round in nowdays, 

and got holiness up and back on its feet 

in one itty-bit of old Germany.

 

A tower, a flower, a refreshing dew,

wrote Hildegarde of you four centuries later,

when Disibodenberg was not upstanding any more,

but you were still worth talking to.

 

That was nine hundred years ago,

and towers and flowers and dew

were not just postcard butterflies, 

and your name wasn’t just a dry seed-pod

for them to flutter dizzily up and down around.

 

 

 

 

Peter Claver

September 9

 

What notes to play, sunbeam,

God ones, filth ones, black ones,

and in you went strumming 

your obstinate lute,

 

into the vast Cartagena market,

hole of holes,

slave of slaves.

 

Oh burnt sugar,

oh branded skin,

oh suppuration, 

as the dying fall.

 

But thousands stayed alive enough

to be sold on and slave away,

away on the estates sweetening Europe,

chanting their lost chords

way away from our eyes.

 

And you kept on with the lute,

after you were robbed by one you had half-saved

who left you half-paralysed.

Still you went on (let me believe)

moistening lips with sweet brandy,

clouding eyes with sweet tunes.

 

The moneymakers praised your holiness,

and turned out besuited for your funeral,

as if they too could be saved.

Then your name waited three hundred years 

for the sticky stamp of sainthood.

 

Oh sweet rotting,

oh death by sweetness,

oh shine of black sugar -

to think no other voice was heard,

not even of despair.

Hugh of Lincoln

November 17

 

So there you are, St Hugh,

up in a corner-niche above the bike-stands

in Magdalen Street,

looking neat and weighty in the stone vestment

chiselled out by some artisan

around 1880 AD, I’d guess,

with a gothic name-tag under your feet

from which to unpick your identity.

You hold a model cathedral carefully,

as if it might break.

There is no trace of the swan

once painted by you by Zurbaràn.

 

The fineness of your face signals desire,

and your unseeing eyes have been fixed on

something in the upper air or beyond,

beyond the bicycles wheeling dangerously

through the revolving streets, 

or locked up as if they could be kept still.

How many times have I not noticed you,

since all I have is such a lot to do?

 

Today my eyes rise up towards you,

and you come out, saying ‘Hello, I’m Hugo’,

and you go on and on about the powerful

and their ridiculous violence,

prayer, building, the poor and sick, silence.

Then you’re back in hiding, 

while I fiddle with the padlock here,

so I can pedal out of hope and fear.

 

Achilles ponders in his tent.

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

The crux stays still and the world goes round. 

But, all being said and done,

it’s nice for a swan to have a saint, 

I say, and a saint a swan.

Sh, sh, whispers Hugo, 

(doing a quick pianissimo comeback)

let’s go over what I said again,

then you go over it again

by yourself when I’ve gone,

if by some chance or grace you can.

 

 

 

Clement 

November 23

 

Sometimes the tide unpredictably recedes,

out there beyond the last hints of wrack and weeds;

the eye strays over the enormous beach

picking up odd bits or signals within reach,

and then drops them, there’s so much to see,

or nothing much, zilch in reality,

except a slice of horizon and a bowl of sky

that look less and less appetizing every day they pass us by,

 

and occasionally an exceptionally low tide

shows something you’d have preferred it to hide,

an anchor, say, protruding sharply from the mud,

though the boat and chain have gone for good,

and if you can focus, you see the rust disperse,

and a box of stripped-down bones appears,

with a big, cheerful angel standing by

who raises his dazzling wings into the lowering sky.

 

Mm, Clement told the Corinthians to hold tight

since everything was vanishing from sight,

including himself, and then got on with the work

that had emerged briefly from the murk.

After that it had always to be fished out again,

cleaned up, tasted, repackaged, posted on,

except when, say, bones and anchor were noticed nearby, 

not likeable nor likely signs, but ones for which to die.

 

 

 

Catherine of Alexandria 

November 25

 

You are one nonexistent girl. 

Fifty philosophers downed by your impossible babble

run off shrieking into Alexandrian blah,

and then all those noble ladies who look into your fetid cell

are seized by its sense and hoist themselves up for martyrdom,

which mad Maxentius magnanimously hands out,

not knowing it is the real maccoy.

Flappy happy angels are floating overhead, 

ready to swoop into the crush

and scoop soul after soul into heaven.

 

Unperturbed by the kerfuffle,

untouched by the scourging of virgin skin

that the sweating boyos can’t wait to doff,

nor their trim commander

for all his controlling glamour,

you pass through the crowd,

and step up to the wheel,

which today has ornamental spikes along the rim.

Your body is gaily spread across it and tied.

Now the wheel is slowly to turn and at each turn a gentleman

with a magnificent hammer

is to break a delicate limb,

and when each broken limb

comes round again, he is to break it again

and so on, and so forth,

until well after you have died.

 

But today heaven gets in the way,

and the wheel accelerates,

until it is whirling like the firework

named after you,

showering coloured sparks and smoke.

Then it spins amok, its spikes springing blood

from action men and onlookers alike 

into the beaming sun,

while you, at its still centre, 

continue cheerfully to pray.

 

It was awesome, dear damsel, 

and the casualties could have been enormous.

To redeem the situation, Maxentius,

madder than ever and more mighty,

orders a quick decapitation.

From your head flows milk.

 

Where are you now, 

saint of students and philosophers,

of wheelwrights and spinners,

of young girls and nurses,

of the moribund,

legend and curiosity since 1969?

 

Now you will always be not quite there, 

as the rest of us tend to be on this planet,

but somehow maybe you can still home in on us,

with sweet milk streaming from your head.

God, what an off-putting thing to think of,

and to think she’s streaming love.

Lucy 

December 13

 

Ah, Lucy, about whom nobody 

knows owt, 

except maybe you were cruelly 

martyred under Diocletian.

 

The Venetian bits aren’t yours,

and the French head isn’t,

and your story has been cruelly 

plucked from you too.

 

It lies there at your side,

like your eyes.

 

Who cares? Here you come

when the days are short and dreary,

with bundles of light,

tossing out sticks of it,

like sticks of rock,

for witless beggars to catch.

 

It brightens us up a lot,

seeing more clearly,

even if the weather turns cruel

as the winter hardens.

Or so they said. 

 

But you won’t know, will you,

if you don’t reach out, don’t catch one,

don’t drop it, don’t fall.

 

Poor suckers for sweetness,

let’s hold on tight now

as we melt.

 

 

Venantius Fortunatus

December 14 

 

Time to get personal,

Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus,

though my tongue is as thick as the snow outside

and won’t spark whatever way I pull it, 

whereas yours was constantly on go,

pushing out warm verse from Poitiers

to Radegund, Gogo, Sigisberth, Berthichild, Faramodus,

and all your other famous friends,

sheltering in the Lord as best they could 

from the unforseeable dangers of 6th-century Gaul 

which were set to worsen over the whole of Europe

after you had left, one and all, for the tranquillity of Paradise.

 

Thank you for the rabbit, the milk, the invitation.

The doctor says no, but it’s your love that counts.

Well done with that church, keep up the virginity,

and you are, Sigisberth, the greatest ruler of all.

Brunhildis has joined us, Virgil is here too with Homer,

and spring airs rise through the resonant ice.

Amalafried it is not just your name that stays with me,

and you, Galeswintha, you too never can leave.

The Seine has hold of you, Rucco, me English waves circle,

and Amalafried and Galeswintha are no more to be seen.

But say what you want, our juices have blended for ever 

in love’s ever-travelling, metamorphic heat.

 

And up bubbled those songs - ‘The king’s flags are up and coming’,

‘Get the tongue around the story of the glorious rough and tumble’, -

that simmered in human mouths,

true and false, for at least a thousand years.

 

Now that the weather is worsening here,

I should have liked to spend an evening or two

chatting with you by some smoky fire,

sharing warm red wine, warm bread

and maybe crispy chicken legs,

most comfortable, companionable and courteous of saints,

who I can imagine agreeing with the general view

that you were never a saint at all.

 

I should have a few of my own famous friends along,

say Robey, Sheringham, Faram,

who don’t believe in any saints or God, plus myself,

Peter Richard Jack Hainsworth,

whose tongue-tied Latin you would smilingly put up with.

This sort of gathering is awkward at first,

but, when conversation turns to the dreadful state of things,

we are suddenly all in it together and all for a few minutes OK,

before you have to get back to the real world

and we wrap ourselves up and leave.

.

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