For The Year Of The Insane

 a prayer

O Mary, fragile mother, 
hear me, hear me now 
although I do not know your words.
 
The black rosary with its silver Christ 
lies unblessed in my hand 
for I am the unbeliever.
 
Each bead is round and hard between my fingers, 
a small black angel.
 
O Mary, permit me this grace, 
this crossing over, 
although I am ugly, 
submerged in my own past 
and my own madness.
 
Although there are chairs 
I lie on the floor.
 
Only my hands are alive, 
touching beads.
 
Word for word, I stumble.
 
A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine.
 

I count beads as waves, 
hammering in upon me.
 
I am ill at their numbers, 
sick, sick in the summer heat 
and the window above me 
is my only listener, my awkward being.
 
She is a large taker, a soother.
 
The giver of breath 
she murmurs, 
exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.
 

Closer and closer 
comes the hour of my death 
as I rearrange my face, grow back, 
grow undeveloped and straight-haired.
 
All this is death.
 
In the mind there is a thin alley called death 
and I move through it as 
through water.
 
My body is useless.
 
It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet.
 
It has given up.
 
There are no words here except the half-learned, 
the Hail Mary and the full of grace.
 
Now I have entered the year without words.
 
I note the queer entrance and the exact voltage.
 
Without words they exist.
 
Without words on my touch bread 
and be handed bread 
and make no sound.
 

O Mary, tender physician, 
come with powders and herbs 
for I am in the center.
 
It is very small and the air is gray 
as in a steam house.
 
I am handed wine as a child is handed milk.
 
It is presented in a delicate glass 
with a round bowl and a thin lip.
 
The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret.
 
The glass rises in its own toward my mouth 
and I notice this and understand this 
only because it has happened.
 

I have this fear of coughing 
but I do not speak, 
a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman 
who comes riding into my mouth.
 
The glass tilts in on its own 
and I amon fire.
 
I see two thin streaks burn down my chin.
 
I see myself as one would see another.
 
I have been cut int two.
 

O Mary, open your eyelids.
 
I am in the domain of silence, 
the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.
 
There is blood here.
 
and I haven't eaten it.
 
O mother of the womb, 
did I come for blood alone? 
O little mother, 
I am in my own mind.
 
I am locked in the wrong house.

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