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MEMORY, CONTEMPLATION, RETROSPECTION, AND DEATH TIM UPPERTON Saint Joseph’s Convent, Waipukurau, 1967 The grave and measured fury of her hand was wrath of God made tangible, the sting and heat a lick of hellfire, rise and fall, rise and fall—the black wooden instrument she struck with fashioned for just this purpose, oval and shaped to fit a five-year-old’s palm, upturned and trembling. The rusty old nun was maybe fifty; you had to hand it to her, the parents said. Such purpose, you knew where you stood. Blood banging, bursting in our ears, we shrilled thin cries, a lament for recalcitrant boys who cave and fall, sin and keep sinning, reprising the Fall . . . One boy helplessly crapped his pants—an old stench clung to his young, hunched frame, testament to his crime, his shame, the teacher’s bright hand alert to it—no peace, never resting, each sensed challenge met with equal purpose. Rebreathed air of afternoons . . . What purpose drove us forward into life, each willful fall a new beginning, spring sap’s run and sting strong in our veins? What? Say, that grace is old as dirt, as God, then why not the left hand’s as good as the right—and if that were meant, wouldn’t it all be different? What we meant and did presumed a sense, a just purpose that hardened Sister Barbara’s face and hand: The iron law that willed the first leaf’s fall said children are damned, and only the old and martyred enjoy life everlasting. A fretful wind this autumn day, gusting down corridors, trying sashes. Fragments of memory, motes of dust stirring—old hymns, the taste of pencils, someone’s purpose mislaid; caught in the plummet of its fall, a dead nun’s terrible, righteous hand: My left hand crabs these lines, a sour judgment, a rubbing at the sting—to no purpose. We all fall, always, and falling, grow old. ...

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