Thursday, April 1, 2021

Well, Hey, Prison, Right? - poem

 

Well, Hey, Prison, Right?

 

When, with the chalice in his hands, the priest came to the words ‘…receive me, O Lord, even as the robber’, nearly all the convicts fell kneeling to the ground with a jangling of fetters…

 

-Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

 

The first-period were really bad today

But, hey, prison, right?

The second-period were really good today

And, hey, prison, right?

 

After class a man arrived solo for Mass

And knelt before the Altar that isn’t there

The chaplains asked him if had been to supper

“No, but I’m not going to miss Mass.”

 

The man would not leave for his supper

Until the chaplains promised him again

That Mass would not begin without him

And it was so

                         And that, too, is prison

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