St Anthony at the Corner

By that time we had lost so much
Our spirits slumped into the early autumn afternoon 
Depleted by debt, diahorrhea, drugs and death.
He shuddered and sobbed in his seat, thin, fragile
Young and old in one private wasteland.
Haunted and trembling he fumbled
Through backpack, pockets, linings, seat backs, clutching
For his box of lifelines, the numbers 
Upon whom duration founders,
Returning now a desolate silence.

Desperately dwindling across the footbridge
For the second time, his ragged footsteps
Returned the past to me as a gilded honeycomb of relative failure
But now, now I needed to keep the curtain from closing.

Panic buyers, taxis and commuters clamoured at the pumps
Hot hatchbacks hemmed me in 
So I walked to the end of the low-slung mini-market
To clear my head of fumes and philosophy.

A gentle glow smeared across the crepuscular canvas of evening
And as my eyes followed it cloudwards
What emerged from silent entreaty
Must have been an accidental prayer.
Just let him find it. 

Give his tormented retching soul
And his dessiccated self-respect
Something not fucked-up, a tiny dose of success
Plucked from a daily sea of humiliation
To prime him for tomorrow’s methadone and the start
Of the long journey to wholeness, however scratched and battered.

As he crossed the forecourt his shoulders told me he was crumpled 
But the light spoke through me.
I nodded towards the shop and heard the words “try behind the counter”
With no recollection of having even thought them
And he went through the doors and out of sight
Like prayers from basilicae in Lisbon, Paris, Spoleto,
Eight hundred years borne upwards to the Professor of Miracles and pious mules
And like those found objects, repatriated things and redirected souls
Returning through those same doors
His hand the prophet of his smile, his phone
And his threadbare life back in his psoriatic fingers.

Could I have spoken to the fish
Ockham’s logic would have left them as unenlightened
As it does me now. I cannot explain, yet 
Somehow, above the burr of this beamer-loud glade
I know I heard a soft carillon of autonomous bells
And the sacramental laughter of a thousand mules.

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 Stephen A. Linstead

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