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Sport 34: Winter 2006

Santa Caterina, Heart of the S'nai

Santa Caterina, Heart of the S'nai

I remember the serial translation of
does he have chest pain?
passing along the language chain

first to the tall Bishop
in his long frock and high
black souffléed hat

lips moving in a thick beard
murmuring Greek in the
Orthodox ear of the Abbott

who spoke to a short acned monk
who passed a longer version
to the grey Bedouin standing

in this stiff dark rank
beside the monastery bed.

The question was scarcely necessary.
The bedbound camel driver's
short blunt fingers pressed his sternum.

His pallor, sweat,
knotted face and liquid breath
said everything.

page 66

I'd come down from Moses'
mountain after a night spent shivering
inside my frozen Fairydown.

I gave the Bedouin my tablets:
frusemide, digoxin
and injected morphine.

As a reciprocal gift
the charnel house
was opened for view.

The bony bits of all monks
for seven centuries
filed drily on slatted shelves

first the unflat:
pelves, ribs, vertebrae
models unchanged

through the centuries
skulls on the top row
all facing forward

long bones next
laid across their shelf
with little piles of knuckle bones

then two supinated
ligamentous
intact hands.