See You in the Dark: Poems

Saint Alexius’s Mother

20 SAINT ALEXIUS’S MOTHER Seventeen years we sheltered the holy man. We took him in when he came begging a place to sleep. Euphemianus, my husband, offered a decent bed but the man would have only the nook below the cellar stairs, ate nothing but gruel, so thin he was, all bone, so holy, always praying, barely sleeping, rarely speaking, not even saying his name, yet thanking us daily for the food and shelter. This morning the servant bringing him his bowl found him crumpled on the floor, his eyes stark and staring, skin stiff and cold. Preparing the body for the laying out, we found in the folds of his robe writings that told of his holy life, signed Alexius, Alexius, the name of our beloved son who fled to escape the marriage we’d arranged— the daughter of a fine Roman family. Alexius, always stubborn, refused the match. He must give his life to God, he said, and ran away. This corpse, our vanished son. We never recognized the boy we raised, so much had holy hunger altered him. Seventeen years, our son, the saintly man, wasting in the hole below the stairs. Why did he choose our door and not another? Was it a yearning to be close by, or was it vicious pleasure taken in deception? Does love of God blind saints to other loves, to the starved heart of a mother without her son? 21 Or was he waiting to be recognized? What kind of mother doesn’t know her son? I cursed myself when I learned his name and hugged his holy bones. I curse Alexius for his cruelty. Tell me, my son, what holiness was this? ...