Everywhere I look, I see suffering…

…I see signs where they are not

I make constellations where there are only

Stars

I wreak havoc on idle tides

To tear the stones from under

Ever more…

Adorned, in sainthood’s golden

Hairshirt’s whitewashed guilt, you too

Must confess those sins of…

To those crystalline eyes, each one a

Chandelier slip-of-the-tongue down to

Mine

Bedside, yours, that I creep to at dawn

Foggy mouthed wide eyed tired

…doubt

As I neell and whisper in our mother’s-

Tongue

Forgive me mother for I have forgiven

Mine father for I

Forgive yourself, for I have not forgiven—

I whisper to them in mother’s-tongue and

Seethe the sacrament; only pocket

Wafers…

…amen.

Everywhere I look starvations sees

And I suckle the coffers of the mother-

Tongue

Ever more I bring more to the father’s-last

-supper

With bread crumbs and wine for the hunch

(judas you have not done enough…

Nearly enough)

I’ve kelled for recindence of thirty years,

Like the Jew

Like the child I’ve begged for years,

Slighted forgiveness for mirrors

I’ve birthed the suffering of each day of which:

‘The silence and emptiness is so great

I look

I do not see

I pray and do not hear’ ;

Only emptiness; his free hands

Guide me.”

– Mother Teresa (1990)