Painting by Elaine Brown Folgar
Classics Unread
Okay, I never finished War and Peace
and I admit it. Sue me! Russian names
are just too much to deal with. Just release
me from the Russian's novel's endless claims
on my attention. Crime and Punishment
starts out well—two gals murdered with an axe—
but it goes on and on... I could invent
a better ending with some carpet tacks
and glue... What made the 19th century
so nuts about long novels? Who can stick
three volumes? Middlemarch and Vanity
Fair and I just won't mention Moby Dick.
From all this heaviness, I need a breather.
PS: I never read Ulysses, either.
Relics
They disinterred St. Raphael of Brooklyn
to make new relics of his skull and jaw.
Forgetting, in the rapturous first look-in,
it's not the Middle Ages anymore.
Most of us don't believe that holiness
adheres in bones from which the will is gone,
that black-boned fingers have the power to bless
or severed jaws the strength to raise a song.
I tell myself the ritual is quaint
and that must be its merit. I don't know
what I would say if I could meet a saint
walking the streets of Brooklyn, or brought low
in death. I think that barrier is high
and final. But it thrills me that we try.
