Volume > Issue > Pietà

Pietà

A POEM

By Sister Claude of Jesus, SNJM | November 1983

“Does the darkness cradle thee Than mine arms more tenderly?”

— Willa Cather

….I know but one thing

You grew

And grew

Standing forth

Tall…taut

Pain wrapped you

Beyond my heart’s fullness

You are lying across

My lap

I who gave you birth

Now cradle you

In the motherness

Of me

To Phoebe*

Phoebe,

Gentle handmaid

Of us all,

Who assisted Paul

And others

Of the early church,

…

Paradoxical in the Extreme

Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.

Possessed

My God, I’m grieved to say it is not true:

Not true I desire naught…