Master Chuang preaches an essential humility…It manifests itself
everywhere by a Franciscan simplicity and connaturality with al
living creatures.” —Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Zu
I saw Assisi again this morning.
The end-of-January moon—crossed and
again crossed by cherry branches, waning
and immaculate over South Mountain—
cast the little coracle of a spell
that carried me there. Well, that and the fact
that, making coffee, I’d read on my cell
an article that had my daydreams packed
and halfway to Umbria already:
An Italian Villa? Yours for a Song!
Naturally, the canticle that came to me
was the one by Francis. But here’s the thing:
it’s hard to like the famous friar’s town,
its elbowing pilgrims, its too-clean, scrubbed down
streets, its shops that, but for the rosaries,
devotionals, the ranks of saint-themed mugs
might line the boardwalk in Ocean City.
Though if you go, if you make the hot slog
up from the parking lot in mid-July,
look for his cassock, displayed under glass.
Imagine it, as the sign suggests, alive
and churning with body lice as he passes
among the poor under Brother Son, or
prays by Sister Moon, seeing the needy
as the ancient Chinese poets saw
faces of distant friends at night when they
gazed up. O, to ponder that with Merton,
but in grittier Naples, over cheap red wine.
