Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 120 February 2002): 33, 39, 44.
In Kenya, vervet monkeys take the ground
Until a sentry gives a chattering bark,
Which in the simple vervet lexicon
Means snake, and connotes evil, death, and dark.
Or else the sentry makes a guttural sound
That translates in our own more complex tongue
To hawk or eagle circling for prey,
And sends the monkeys scampering. Either way,
The monkeys must take action—jump or flee
Across the ground or to a sheltering tree.
Should one, instead, hearing a sentry speak,
Decide to deconstruct the fellow’s meaning
And prove all urgent chattering oblique,
A python’s fang or hawk’s cruel curving beak
Will punctuate the monkey’s idle preening,
Ending his dissertation in mid–squeak.
—Paul Lake
Flow, blood; you are not me
but I have known your intercourse
since the crimson dawn of infancy
and felt your churning force.
Rest, heart; prepare anew
for I will vein a richer flood
of this eddying life and pressure through
my system bolder blood.
Blood is strength but blood turns sour
wrecks the font and wilts the flower;
only baptized blood has power.
With this blood I signify
fresh life to sanctify
each remaining pulsing hour.
Rise, soul; a new sun dawns
and childhood beckons ever when
in thy freshened frame an impulse fawns
on life come back again.
—Richard Novak, C.S.C.
The angels offered reprieve,
escape for Lot’s entire household
including almost–sons who having witnessed
a divine defense of honor
dared to scoff at certain doom.
Commanded in that final moment to depart,
Lot himself paused,
needed to be tugged away
from his destruction—
man caught up in doubts and compromise
the hand of grace dislodged for him; for us.
What did Lot’s wife hope to see
when on that moving day her eyes slid back
to the town where she had raised a family,
exchanged the recipes of substitution . . .
Perhaps she turned to douse with tears
the fire of a hearth where friendship dawdled
near the shame she’d entertained:
in her heart, still burning,
embers of a tolerance
for sin we too have hosted—
her final heedless turning hardened
into destination.
—Leslie Goerner