24 April 2022 / Dear Ron,

 

24 April 2022

Dear Ron,

You're in the factory with those last soldiers

bandaging torn muscles,

applying direct pressure,

stop the bleeding. Stop denying.

You're with those men in Mariupol.

I know what you say about this,

dressed in the uniform of Christ,

Not me, Christ. 

Like you're kneading flour, baking bread.

Christ almighty! the poets cry, 

cursing, trusting unseen prayers 

in hurried verses, maybe feckless,

acts of resistance nevertheless.

I am one of the poets.

Mariupol may be among those rare

congregations of the chosen.

I first read about the criminals

in the Karl Barth you sent me

years ago. I'm reading Chekhov.

Chekhov sees the difference 

between compassion and communion.

Born in Taganrog, SW Russia.

Maps tell me Taganrog's 69 miles

from Mariupol. I found 

this out last night by chance

beginning The Steppe.

I fell asleep with the novel open.

It's Sunday. What Psalm

do you recommend for me

this morning? No more 

kneading flour, though.

I'm baking pies, working 

double crusts--the French

call it frisage, smearing butter

into flour with the heal

of your hand. Kneading

warms the dough,  losing

its flakiness. You're 

in that factory with those men.

You've taken me to that jail, 

Barth's deliverance to the captives

rests on the arm of my butterscotch chair.

What prayer comes from the heel of the hand?

Are we ready to be told what we are?

You sit with the driver, Ron,

in that horse-drawn cart.

Chekhov calls it a Britzka.

Your body says, Not for the just

but the unjust, 

what matters, now.

Jim