The Anathemata
Keel, Ram, Stauros (continued)
For the dedicated men in skirts to cense
before, behind, above, below
on the glad invention morning?a
Are the faithful given authenticated fragments?
Do these fastidious
exorbitantly perfected
red, and as
roses-on-a-stalk
reach to salute you
along with the shapeless and dowdy pious
and the pious donors, and, brow-bright Pietas herself
just where, just now
with what’s left of lips
the swaithed incurable that crept unseen
left his unseen mark?
Do these patina, do they enhance
do they quite wear-down
your adzed beauties
slowly, century on centuries
with fond
or efficacious, salutes?
Knowing the changing fasti?
Sometimes palled? sometimes
stripped by the sacristans?c
Diurnally, and for the Nocturns
Polyhymnia comes and goes?
at any hour the maimed king
pays a call?
Twice a century—perhaps
for nine days or so
Demos
with crisis in his unnumbered eyesd
importunes counter-wonders?
David Jones notes
additional notes
a The feast of the Finding (Latin: invenire, to find) of the Holy Cross, May 3; see here for the associated legend.
b i.e. do the fastidious kiss the cross with their red-lipsticked lips just as a leper has crept in unseeen also to kiss it?
a From Passion Sunday until Easter, all the images in a Catholic church are swathed (‘palled’) in a purple cloth; and on Good Friday, the altar is stripped to the bare stone.
d Occasionally there is a crisis or nine-days wonder and innumerable people come to the church to pray for ‘counter-wonders’.
comments
The poet’s thoughts now turn to addressing Stauros: the wooden crucifix in a church and the ritual kissing of it. The second line is taken from Donne’s Elegy XIX, which is concerned with erotic kissing.