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  • Rosary Bead, Netherlands, c. 1500
  • Robert Cording (bio)

It asks to be handled and touched, This two inch elaborately carved Sphere of boxwood cloistered inside A glass case. For an hour now I've tried to see it with the eyes of The Abbess who would have held it Closed in her fingers, and traced Its equatorial crown of thorns Where it has been hinged to open On an interior storied world Hidden behind two carved doors Upon which Adam and Eve concede to Their blurred, competing desires. Hail Mary, full of grace . . . Inside, more than a hundred Figures, fractions of an inch long, Were carved and fitted together Into upper and lower scenes by A craftsman graced with patience And the belief, perhaps, that inside The emptiness of a hollowed out Sphere of wood, a whole creation Could take place—birth, death, And the life between made visible, A narrative in which someone Might come to know herself— My nun, for instance, Whom I've imagined drawing Our father, who art in Heaven . . . Into her mouth, bringing breath And tongue together, forming Those hovering words again and Again, waiting for that shuddering Emptiness beneath the rote And homiletic, that ache of relief That comes when she is rapt [End Page 179] In conversation with a voice that is Her own and not her own, And which does not speak so much As fill an absence, and usher in An odd uncanny calm. Standing here, I almost feel The thousands of prayers that passed Across her lips and the peace Of saying them out—Glory be To God the Father . . . –almost feel The weight of this boxwood bead In my hand, though it remains Behind glass, a beautifully detailed Museum piece from Brabant.

Robert Cording

Robert Cording teaches English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross where he is the Barrett Professor of Creative Writing. He has published four collections of poems: Life-list (Ohio State University Press/Journal award, 1987); What Binds Us to This World (Copper Beech, l991); Heavy Grace (Alice James, l996); Against Consolation (CavanKerry, 2002). A new book, Common Life, is due in the spring of 2006. rcording@holycross.edu

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