A VISIT TO THE CHURCH

But superstition, like belief, must die.
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
(Philip Larkin)


There must be no sadder creatures in all innumerable creation
than those church figures of saints.
The niche they dwell is also a sort of cell,
and if they could I suppose they would fly back home,
bound for the high sky in the dome,
for which their eyes long without ever reaching.
They ignore that, much beyond it,
another Sky, sometimes all blue too,
nestles birds whose singing clings less faded and manageable
than the one from those hand-painted on the frescos.

Six on the hour, the believers jostle
in search of God before the altar.
I find it weird that they call this place the house of God.
As if He wouldn’t feel more comfortable in distinct whereabouts:
sleeping on a doorstep with other street boys
or playing dice behind closed doors.
It’s no bad thing that they look for Him where they please,
it’s only as though they had taken the wrong car
and rode much beyond the stopping point
at which they shouldn’t have gotten off from the start.

There must be no sadder creature in all creation
than this church God.
He owes forgiveness to everybody,
but will never feel the glory
to deserve someone’s apology.
He has no history,
nor can he yearn for perfection,
because He has already got it.
He can’t feel love as an unremitting passion,
beyond good and evil.

There is death in the world and God lands on the Earth
in the hope of gathering one pure soul.
Poor devil! Goodness has nothing to do with
our willingness to be virtuous.
I don’t know a sole creature,
in full possession of his faculties,
who doesn’t consider himself a man of principle.
Goodness outruns our perceptive senses.
We are like those wooden saints,
which ignore the boundaries of their own transcendence.