Filíocht Nua: New Poetry

SEVEN WORKS OF MERCY

I. Miracle in Naples

  Feeding the hungry

We make a pilgrimageto the tiny chapel of Pio Monte della Misericordiato feast on Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy.

It is our last stop in Naplesand the security guard, his keys already in the door,is closing half an hour early.

We beg for one taste of our summer’s last Caravaggioand the guard tells us we can see iton his black and white CCTV.

We squint in disbeliefas a side altar flashes onto the tiny screen,next a dark rectangle, then a closed door.

The men who have been repairing the plasterlounge under the porch,their overalls freckled pinkish white.Cigarette smoke trickling its haloes around them,they wake to our pleading.

Suddenly the guard is centre of his own tableau.At first the men are understatedbut their gestures expandas they shrug in our direction,make a dumb showof seeing, supplication,disappointment, grand generosity.

Finally, with a sigh of defeat,the guard unhooks the keys from his belt.It is a miracle.

We crowd the spacebefore the altarpiece,our eyes devouring Naples:its madness, indifference, kindness,crammed into one scene.

Had we not been four days in the city,we might not have recognisedthis realm of death and angels.

Above, Mary and her boy watch two seraphs plungetowards a body carried past a dungeon,while a woman casually suckles an old manthrough the barred window.

And who would choose her to illustratefeeding the hungryand visiting the prisonerbut this jailbird painter with the dirty nails,his blood maddening in the city heat,a murder on his hands?

Where else could Samsonrub his Old Testament shoulderswith city slickers,and drink from a bonehe holds over their headswhile beggars touch their feet?

Memento mori.Before the guard can summon us,we file out of the chapel.

II. Daughter

  Visiting the imprisoned

I am breastfeeding my father through the bars.My skin purses against the raw air,my nose against the hum of death.Mostly, the men ignore me.

I’m no novelty:in Pompeii, a woman’s ochre handholds a nipple to a wasted manwhose thin hand splays on her other breast.

Usually, it’s the Madonnawhose breasts shower thirsty saints with miraclesbut I am no virgin.

Even now, my eyes assess the crowd across the darkness.A peasant grasping the shins of a corpsetries to meet my gaze,but I look beyond him at a possibility:

the innkeeper, in his goffered frill,has an eye to commerce,knows these passage-ways as I do,can diagnose a situation.

This is no birth of the Milky Way,no Rubens with lush cream exploding into a galaxy.The heavens are unwinding like a shroud.Only Caravaggio could capture me:

absence of hope in my swollen cheek,the city’s dirt cross-hatching my feet.I am necessary and afraid,a wet-nurse advertising my wares.

And Papa is no saintmade clear-eyed by a sprinklefrom the divine breast:a runt who can barely suckle,he dribbles onto his beard.This, too, is love.

The nights pile up like detritus in the streets.The angels’ wings are dark, the fall is everywhere.What looks like kindness is a kind of despair,the knowledge of a shared fate.

His mouth depresses my breast.Soon we will both be drained. Soon, again,my feet will palpate the streets,I will nurse only my bruises.

III. Samson

  Giving drink to the thirsty

What am I doing in this alleyway—an antique rustic gawping in the town,Samson Anachronistes, liquidator,on whom immortal pity gushes down?

I am the one who showed no mercy, ever;a God Almighty on a power trip;a suicide bomber bringing down the temple;the one who’s lost and will not lose his grip.

I am the attitude without the buzz cut;thick as a ton of bricks, the hardest chaw;a long-haired layabout...