Edwin Brock
An Ordered Sabbath
Six days lean on Sunday like a sullen reprimand:
the wind that waves the family in brings
only some epithet from me, such as: now I’ll
get to church looking like a sodding golliwog!
When my wife kneels as we enter, I imagine her mind
folded in like the pistil of a tulip. I kneel too
but can only say: Well, since I’m here, for Christ’s
sake do something with me — hoping that I have not
taken the name in vain. I compose my face, arrange
my hands and knees in all appropriate gestures, bow
when others bow and follow like a coward to the altar rail.
Five years ago in Alton I knelt with two dozen monks
and felt myself involved. Now I wail to myself like
an Old Testament hero prophesying doom. The excuse
I make for going is the children, and I wait
until they’re out of hearing before I tell my wife
that my aftermath is like a pocket of green bile; she
eats her egg and bacon sadly. At one o’clock I’ll take her
to the pub and roar in my own element; at three,
if the kids are out, I’ll whip her into bed.
Six days lean on Sunday like a sullen reprimand and
when Sunday comes round I break out into loneliness —
like the tree we often point to in the park
that sheds its leaves in the early days of spring.
Page(s) 49
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