FROM THE CHRISMATORY.

Nine month living, six week dead: white shroud
laced with hoar-frost, trimmed with sod
its flounces swirl a vortex of singing, ring-a-rosy voices
sucked backwards over streets & fields to this
hole-in-the-ground.
                            A policy in advance of a massacre:
a populace charmed by the smell of promised bread
on every table.
                      Oil of catachumens
                      oil of the sick
                      oil of chrism
                                (olive oil & balsam)
                                         to set a man apart.
Secured in a copper box, hid in a wall of the north nave
when superstition was to be uprooted, melted down.
Novum mandatum: on a Thursday, marching
orders, in the vulgar tongue, to get you to Friday –
one day, one time. Water floats word. Blood-washed.
Passed over & under-
mined.