04-16-2023, 02:48 AM
The evening of Good Friday, a storm was raging,
and every prayer we read or hymn we sung
had to be shouted. Most of us were late,
even the priest, although he lived in the church
(apparently it was also his birthday)
and driving through a flooded bit of street
I dinked the bottom of my car. A clap of thunder
shook the matushka at one point
and by the time all the lights were off
we were skipping pages, slurring words.
Good Saturday, and the first thing that I asked
our aged priest was if he felt alright
after the last night -- he'd felt he had to walk
outside with me, in the pouring rain,
to help me with my car. There were too few of us,
that following night, for a shroud: all we did
after the lamentations was to kiss
the sleeping Christ, the Gospel, and the Cross.
At one point I had a dream. A girl I'd started to fancy
by virtue of a single class we shared
and the fact that we always parked next to each other
a block away from our college was there,
giving me and my fellow visitors
a tour of the family mansion. The library and the solar
were the highlights, I enjoyed
caressing the outdated encyclopedias,
the old toys, the LDs and CDs -- childhood
tokens they could afford to keep.
The morning and the afternoon,
the heat was harsh, I could not help
but overdrink. The first thing the matushka said
as I, an hour early, arrived to help
at the kitchen: "Oh, your back!
That sweat!" And apparently
our priest, he had to improvise
the tone for one of the hymns,
but even the stern-faced angel having to bear
instruments of war in the House of God
gave up a certain satisfied
twinkle in his eye.
and every prayer we read or hymn we sung
had to be shouted. Most of us were late,
even the priest, although he lived in the church
(apparently it was also his birthday)
and driving through a flooded bit of street
I dinked the bottom of my car. A clap of thunder
shook the matushka at one point
and by the time all the lights were off
we were skipping pages, slurring words.
Good Saturday, and the first thing that I asked
our aged priest was if he felt alright
after the last night -- he'd felt he had to walk
outside with me, in the pouring rain,
to help me with my car. There were too few of us,
that following night, for a shroud: all we did
after the lamentations was to kiss
the sleeping Christ, the Gospel, and the Cross.
At one point I had a dream. A girl I'd started to fancy
by virtue of a single class we shared
and the fact that we always parked next to each other
a block away from our college was there,
giving me and my fellow visitors
a tour of the family mansion. The library and the solar
were the highlights, I enjoyed
caressing the outdated encyclopedias,
the old toys, the LDs and CDs -- childhood
tokens they could afford to keep.
The morning and the afternoon,
the heat was harsh, I could not help
but overdrink. The first thing the matushka said
as I, an hour early, arrived to help
at the kitchen: "Oh, your back!
That sweat!" And apparently
our priest, he had to improvise
the tone for one of the hymns,
but even the stern-faced angel having to bear
instruments of war in the House of God
gave up a certain satisfied
twinkle in his eye.