How strangely our flesh-eating manifests itself there:
just like sick people or children we orally ingest
a morsel of the Mystery. The thing we swallow
has the papery taste of a verse with no rhyme
and melts in the mouth like consecrated snow.

And how strange our weekend mood there is,
as we make our confessions not out of loneliness
or someone else’s fault. And we breathe in the smell
of the holy Ghost: love and incense.
He is the light of our cross-eyed hearts.

Besides these, other miracles just don’t happen,
we don’t get any holy e-mails,
The L.G. doesn’t call, not even on the ward,
and those who keep on waiting for a soul transplant
see nothing in their ecstatic visions
but a psychotropic wafer.



Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones