Religious Verse

For A. M. Juster

The problem is that everyone
Would like to write religious verse.
We feel the poignant moment strike
When passing by the lonely hearse,
Or in the autumn, when the leaves
Drop decedent—Be still, my heart!—
And give us intimations of
Mortality, as well as art.

It’s then, we think, the time has come
To speak of life and afterlife,
Of sacramental tapestries,
Of anxious existential strife,
Of solitude and suffering
(With dreamy eyes and lips unfurled),
Of Dostoevsky’s pensive quip
That beauty’s what will save the world.

When melancholic, overwrought,
Or in a rapture of élan,
We reach for pen and paper; but
One shouldn’t just because one can.
Though slender music’s what we need,
Our poems are fat; there’s nothing terse—
And that’s the risk when everyone
Would like to write religious verse.