St. Francis Poems

      Copyright © 2013 David Craig. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-061-1

      EISBN 13: 978-1-62189-732-3

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

      Preface

      As Catholics, we have a rich mine of wisdom and stories. No religious tradition has more. And yet how much time do we spend truly meditating on the lives of our saints, on the oral and written tales which have come down to us? The Fioretti and The Three Companions are part of this deposit. Both medieval texts relay those early days of St. Francis and of his movement; and unfortunately, because of that fact they are too easily dismissed as quaint or excessively childlike. However, as we know, one cannot be too childlike. These stories are important because they give us something of the spirit of St. Francis. They give us a deeper somatic take on people who have done more, who have done it right.

      One can read the texts together: the stories and the poems, though that is not necessary as each poem is self-contained. The epigraphs taken from the originals map each piece, announce the “oral” turns one can occasionally expect.

      I

      His birth, vanity, frivolity and prodigality, how he became generous and charitable to the poor.

      Dignity underfoot, he sang so loudly from stumps,

      imaginary instruments, that anyone who passed

      just had to watch him dare himself, paint his way

      into one spiritual corner after another,

      until he had no options but severest truth,

      in the boisterous rhymes of the troubadours—

      set right, by a grin so local it owns the world.

      His father had named him after a country

      where they knew their fabric, where they valued

      life’s buckled and measured step

      as well as its print, had insisted on a carafe of friends,

      ridiculous neighbors—though Pica

      wanted the breath of God: Giovanni!

      So Francis learned to trade the prayer

      the best cloth was for the smiles of new friends.

      After work, his mates rang in the chorus

      his money made: a cascade of mirth, grace,

      surrounded as they all were,

      by the cold stones of the only night.

      It was all he could give them.

      (Was he vain—or just so caught up in his enthusiasms

      that they’d begun to make their own demands?)

      He’d sew rags to more expensive stuffs,

      embracing, again that widow want,

      knowing he could not, needing to tell everyone

      that as well. So he became a jongleur,

      a determined clown, standing in the breech

      between the sorrowful truth of this world

      and the fleeting faces of his friends.

      Courteous in manner, speech, even beyond

      his exaggerated self-conscious parody;

      everyone knew he could name his own future.

      He loved to pose, but only because it promised

      what was, in some real way, already here—

      until a customer’s smirk razed him, brought him down

      to squalor, to a world beyond his making,

      to people who had nothing to give but their fleas.

      It was that wound again,

      what he and his friends felt: an abyss

      that could not be filled.

      Given this, he wondered, where could he live?

      II

      How he was imprisoned during Assisi’s battle with Perugia and of the two visions he later had, wanting to become a knight.

      He camped for his new peers,

      as if he were that troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn,

      fresh from the castle’s bread kilns: dancing, skirt lifted

      on cold stones, singing too loudly to birds

      out the small window, telling rhymes

      of fearful Assisian Knights.

      Why should he worry? The world was new enough;

      every morning everywhere mists came,

      only to be burnt away by the sun,

      so many new people around by afternoon,

      no one could’ve guessed.

      And so when the weight of the hours

      began to take the measure of one knight’s need,

      Francis would not back down. He flanked the man,

      feinted, sang in bad langue d’oc because he was

      a merchant’s son: “What do you think will become of me?

      Rest assured, I will be worshiped throughout the world.”

      Eventually released, a dream would finally wake him:

      past the castles it offered, the legions of runic, rubied arms—

      surpassing even his carefully chosen own,

      a walled field of shields bronzing sunlight.

      Chivalry so moved in him the next morning

      that he gave all his clatter away. Friends laughed,

      wondered if his stirruped feet were (ever) on the ground.

      But Francis, for his part, he figured, yes, yes,

      he could give them this; he could give the answer

      before its time, be its fool, its peacock,

      anything to help them see.

      When asked the reason for his glow, Francis

      answered largely, as if he were one:

      “I shall become a great prince.”

      Why else were dreams given, but to make us princes

      (and