First Things RSS Feed - Len Krisak

First Latin Mass

Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Under their trapdoor brass lid buried flush
In marble lay the notes: a shallow tomb
Of keys that Lazarus-like would ring the chimes
At consecration. Just the lightest brush
Of fingertips, the slightest hint of rush,
And error filled the narrow little room
It was allowed. Five years before the times

When celebrants who’d always turned their backs
On those who served and poured and knelt and bowed
Would face lay faces and the music of
Guitars, I lit six wicks and watched white wax
Melt down. Hushed to a sort of humming pax,
My peers on kneelers proved they weren’t too proud
To flood the pews with something close to love—

And sparge the solemn nave with grade-school titters
When schadenfreude saw its perfect chance:
Lace sleeves grew from his chasuble; the host
Rose pale amidst the tabernacle’s glitters,
White ghost on gold. And I, possessed by jitters,
Entered the blessèd state of panicked trance.
One note clanked like a pot lid through my most

Egregious, grievous fault of fingering.
It made the marble everywhere say no,
From altar stone and column clear to vault.
It told the faithful body dong dong ding ;
Announcing they could laugh at Christ the King.
And ite said, I must have felt as though
To look back would have turned my soul to salt.

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Deferred

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

I never shot a commie or a Nazi
In ’66, but this is what I did:
Field-stripped an M1 when I was in ROTC.
There were a lot of metal things that slid,
And springs and clips and T-shaped bits galore.
Clip latches, swivels, trigger guard, and trigger
All fell apart. I never went to war.
I think it would have asked for far more rigor
Disassembling my first carburetor.
I learned you never call your piece a gun.
I learned there’d be no sacrifice much greater
Than two semesters’ drill with that M1
To get me out of Michigan’s PE
Requirement. By April, I was free.

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Magnificat

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Already gravid, she ascended, nearly
bereft of any solace, faith, or hope.
The pregnant matron, proudly and austerely
knowing, met her on the slope,

aware of all that Mary need not share.
Since she was resting on her suddenly,
the heavy frau embraced with patient care,
and waited till the younger spoke: “You see,

I feel as if I were to live forever.
God fills the rich with vanities, dear friend,
almost not even looking at their clever
glitter; choosing maidens, though, He’s never
rash, but fills them with life without end.

That He found me! Consider, that on my
account His fiats moved the stars. Oh, raise
Him up, my soul. Exalt the Lord on high,
for all that you can praise.”

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Review of Breakwater

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Breakwater
by Catharine Savage Brosman
Mercer University Press, 112 pages, $30

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What Good Is It That Girls Need Never Go To War?

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0500

What good is it that girls need never go to war
Or wear a shield or march in columns or
Bow down to Mars, if they take out a bloody knife
And blind the womb that bears a fated life?
The first who ever tried to cut away her child
Deserved to die for what she had defiled.
How could it be that stretch marks make for such disgust
That you become like killers palled in dust?
Had mankind’s mothers been so selfish, mean, and base,
There never would have been a human race,
And we’d have needed, one more time, some pair to throw
Pebbles behind them, so mankind might grow
Who would have ruined Priam if the mother of
Achilles hadn’t borne her child with love?
If Ilia hadn’t given Romulus his birth,
How could eternal Rome have ruled the earth?
Had Venus ripped Aeneas from her, such a deed
Would orphan us of Caesars in our need.
You, too, Corinna, born so pretty: you’d have died
If your mother had done what you just tried.
And me! (Though I’ll die from romantic love’s excess.)
My mother gave me life by saying yes.
Why strip the vine of grapes just as it starts to climb,
Not even drinking wine before its time?
Ripe fruit drops on its own; better a life that’s late
Than death! So great a prize, so brief a wait!
And yet your weapons go on gouging out the wombs
That poisons make your children’s early tombs.
We hate Medea for the blood she’s splattered with—
Her babes’—and grieve for Itys in the myth.
Child killers that they were, at least they had some cause,
Ruining their men by blood that broke all laws.
Where is your Tereus? Where’s the Jason who demands
You pierce your innards with a mother’s hands?
Armenian tigresses won’t do what women will;
No lioness will see her cub and kill,
Though girls of nineteen do—but not without a price
(Abortion doubles human sacrifice).
Then she is borne away to burn, her hair undone,
To cries of “serves her right!” from everyone.
But let my words dissolve, and heaven blow away
The awful burden of these things I say.
Dear gods, allow her—once—to sin and still survive;
Two sins, and she need not be kept alive.

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