| PASSION OF SAINT BERNADETTE | |
| I. | |
| In 1858, the dump at Massabielle | |
| was visited. | |
| Three girls, poor as mice | |
| walked miles to gather sticks and bones; | |
| without a fire, the late winter gripped | |
| and clutched at the edges of their lives. | |
| Massabielle, the place of rocks | |
| grew from the land like a stout sore. | |
| Barren, it mocked the sky with scabs | |
| of granite and irregular, low temples | |
| dotting the banks of La Gave, the stream | |
| whose water flowed as liquid ice in March. | |
| From there, the parish spire seemed far. | |
| From there, in the French Pyrénées, Lourdes awoke | |
| from the trance of normalcy, to rub its eyes | |
| against the tail-flame of a single, shooting star. | |
| II. | |
| To Bernadette Soubirous, fourteen, asthmatic, | |
| the image appeared from the stone | |
| in luminous relief, with outstretched hands | |
| calling the lame and stupid to its lap. | |
| She would be the first, and willing. | |
| Impervious to shards and pebbles thrown, | |
| a girl and woman conversed on matters only known | |
| in the dimension of saints and their opposite, | |
| the burned sinners, a damned ecstasy | |
| bridged by the fog of her intermittent breath, alone. | |
| The other two, saw nothing. | |
| (Faith is the act of seeing nothing.) | |
| Among instructions, the hand-maid grasped her gratuity: | |
| "I CANNOT PROMISE YOU HAPPINESS IN THIS LIFE, | |
| BUT IN THE NEXT." | |
| That would have to do. | |
| III. | |
| After the news | |
| a woman rose from the street to slap Bernadette | |
| for "telling tales out of school." | |
| One wonders | |
| if this woman | |
| was sent by God to represent the singe of doubt | |
| that paints our souls | |
| with the fresco of Judas and other fools, | |
| and if her progeny sold cakes and rosaries | |
| by the side of the road | |
| as a century moved to its all-too antipathetic close. | |
| No matter. | |
| In a few fortnights, the girl and two witnesses grew | |
| to eight thousand, multiplying like fish in Matthew, | |
| like the Mount of Olives, like the Catalan bullfights, | |
| like Aquerò said. | |
| IV. | |
| Quick to grab the spade | |
| or rifle for a fight, conscript or king | |
| we file in duty to the yaw of Magog, | |
| meat for an idol's fire. | |
| But quicker still, thank God (and Christ) | |
| we stop, dropping to our knees | |
| at evidence of something maybe more, | |
| even the illiterate acolyte's story | |
| of apparitions in a dung-heap, | |
| rising to vigil at a tree of dead roses | |
| waiting for the beginning | |
| or the end of the world. | |
| We are sick of the middle, and it, sick of us, retreats. | |
| So from Paris, from Tours, all over France | |
| in ox-carts and camions they came, carried lightly, | |
| even slightly above their seats. | |
| V. | |
| There was nothing to see here. | |
| Just a girl, wrapped in a beatitude | |
| crawling on her petticoat, eating weeds, | |
| digging the earth for beads | |
| of penitence. | |
| But within hours, her furrows | |
| formed a spring of unlike water, unlike the elements | |
| that formed it, the geology that contained it, | |
| the chemist who strained to explain any vestige of it, | |
| unlike the constabularies who would | |
| fence and restrain it from eyes | |
| that cried blindly for its invisibility, | |
| from cankered throats who drank with glassy clarity | |
| and cripples who rubbed that fond neutrality | |
| on the withered limbs and minds | |
| of a world, to make it whole again. | |
| VI. | |
| One day, after the sixteenth vision | |
| almost as an afterthought-- | |
| reporting as the parish dean had sought | |
| the name of the thing, the lady, the Aquerò, | |
| as if in incantation, she said: | |
| "que soy era | |
| immaculada | |
| councepciou." | |
| "I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION." | |
| One thousand Hiroshimas-to-be | |
| could not obliterate what that brought. | |
| As babies danced, and the fever | |
| of lepers vaporized in one shot, | |
| reforming their Rodin faces-- | |
| the girl would soon complete her mission here, | |
| but not her lot. | |
| VII. | |
| You can today buy cheap glass balls | |
| of Bernadette-in-the-Grotto, | |
| showered with sparkles as the earth shakes | |
| in the hands of children. | |
| The faces pressed to glass | |
| behold a special one, with the Special One, | |
| not unlike the figure at Saint-Gildard, | |
| who came in the spring of 1863 | |
| as prescribed by prelates, nurtured | |
| by the dim prospects of alternative existence, | |
| of that poor Lourdes life turned into | |
| tawdry spectacle by adoring masses-- | |
| and deemed as finally wise by a woman-child | |
| who desired a bridehood of holy separateness | |
| only to become, in convent, Marie-Bernard, | |
| Sister, obedient spectacle of cardinals and kings. | |
| VIII. | |
| Little apothecary, apprentice to the infirm | |
| when she wasn't herself | |
| coughing blood mouthfuls and carried to bed, | |
| to her white chapel-- | |
| prayed with the novices | |
| who'd steal upstairs | |
| asking for the story | |
| the story, always story | |
| and the official biographers | |
| and the juries of Rome they asked, re-asked | |
| for the story, and the story | |
| was always the same-- | |
| while at Lourdes, a well-planned Carrara statue | |
| of a too-old-looking vision, whose photo she shunned | |
| won its place in the Grotto, | |
| beckoning with slightly wrong hands. | |
| IX. | |
| She might herself have been the greatest | |
| textbook case. | |
| Ankylosis of knee. Lesion to the bone. | |
| Tubercular, bed-sores | |
| like monasteric tapestry | |
| across the slight back-- | |
| but when asked, who better | |
| than she should return to the water | |
| of the spring to be reborn, she would say: | |
| "It is not for me. I stay | |
| in my corner." | |
| The miracle, she! | |
| Did they not understand? Dear Zola, it was irony. | |
| This miracle of | |
| suffering | |
| she. | |
| X. | |
| April 16, 1879. This was between her | |
| and her Jesus. | |
| Death was slow, like a dance | |
| of stillness. | |
| The sisters, seven magpies | |
| awaited her, this most regal of creatures | |
| this little girl, now thirty-five | |
| fixing her gaze on the crucified figure | |
| transcendent as Bernhardt | |
| at the Comédie Française, | |
| as the Virgin soprano | |
| at end of a well-done Stabat mater. | |
| Quel denouement. Even Zola, miscreant, had to say: | |
| "she was beautiful in death, and the body, | |
| interred after three days, was still warm, | |
| lips red, and smelling sweet." | |
| XI. | |
| For other than Catholics, and constables, | |
| this becomes a ghost story. | |
| In 1909, the vault was opened. | |
| They did not hunt ghouls. They searched for the chosen. | |
| They knew what they would find | |
| if she was one. | |
| Inside the vault, | |
| it was 1879, again. | |
| The body was perfect. No decay. | |
| The habit was damp. The crucifix | |
| in her grasp was green, devoured by rust. | |
| Sister Marie-Bernard was redressed, replaced. | |
| In 1919, the same procedure. | |
| And the same result. The chill was now off the mystery. | |
| She was, and she is, | |
| Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. | |
| XII. | |
| She awaits her Prince, like Snow White, | |
| in a gorgeous glass reliquary. | |
| To the spring, they come in millions. Bees to the hive | |
| immersing themselves in their own | |
| dewy hexagon of faith. | |
| Some do not believe. Zola saw two cures with his own eyes | |
| and did not believe. | |
| But to cure the blind, they must first | |
| understand that they cannot see, and can be forgiving. | |
| So, while we wait | |
| the world turns, expecting new fission | |
| as the restless Lady | |
| chooses her alighting time | |
| to once again wake the living. | |
| I prepare my child. And I prepare myself. | |
| Each bee to its own, and to her sweet commission. | |
| Copyright 1996 Al Rocheleau | |
| (ARRO40, NOVL ARRO) | |
