FATHER MERCY, MOTHER TONGUE

FATHER MERCY, MOTHER TONGUE

FATHER MERCY, MOTHER TONGUE

If the English language was good enough for Jesus
                                 Christ, opined
                the governor of our then-most-populous

                                 state, It is good enough for the schoolchildren
                                                                   of Texas.
                Which is why, said the man at the piano, I

will always love America: the pure
                                 products
                of the Reformation go a little crazy here.

                                                                   Red bowl
                                                                           of dust, correct us, we
                                                 are here on sufferance every one.

             In 1935 the very earth rose up
                                                 against us, neither
                                tub-soaked sheets nor purer thoughts could keep it

out. Doorsills, floorboards, nostrils,
                                                                   tongue. The sugarbowl
                                was red with it, the very words we spoke

                                                were dirt.
                             There must have been something
                                                      to do, said my youngest one once (this
                      was worlds
                                                away and after the fact).

We hoped for rain.

                We harvested thistle to feed the cows.
                                              We dug up soapweed. Then
                               we watched the cows and pigs and chickens die. Red
                                                                                                bowl
          of words.
                                          And found ourselves as nameless as
                                                                   those poor souls up from Mexico

and just about as welcome as the dust.
                                                        Pity the traveler
                                          camping by a drainage ditch in someone else’s

                                beanfield, picking someone else’s bean crop who is here
                                                                                                  and gone.

                                                                                                                     And look

                                     where all that parsing of the Latin led: plain Eunice
                                                                     in her later years refused

                to set foot in a purpose-
                                                         built church (a cross
                                      may be an idol so
                                                                                                a white-
                                washed wall may be one too), preferring to trust

                                                                a makeshift circle of chairs in the parlor
                                                                                                                     (harbor for
                the heart in its simplicity),
                         her book.

                                                                                        This morning
                I watched a man in Nacogdoches calling
                                                         all of the people to quit
                                                                           their old lives, there were screens
                                        within screens: the one

above his pulpit (so huge
                                   was the crowd), the one I worked
                with my remote. Then turn . . .

                                    And something like the vastness of the parking lot
                                             through which
                they must have come (so
                                        huge) appeared
                                                                                to be on offer, something
                           shimmered like the tarmac on an August day.

                                                              Is this
                                      the promised solvent (some were
                                                       weeping, they were black and white)?
                                                                                                         A word

                so broad and shallow (flee), so rinsed
                                                                         of all particulars (flee Babel,

                             said the preacher) that translation’s
                                                                                moot. The tarmac
                                                      keeps the dust down, you must give it

that. The earth this time will have to scrape us off.