Uncle Wally reads Augustine’s Confessions
but finds it too narrow and dark.
Why was this man so tortured?
Why spurn the long lovely limbs we so long desire?
But then a door opens unto a sweetness,
Uncle Wally reads,
a state of sweet and pure delight,
before our sad weight makes us fall again,
we are swallowed up and weep.
And this Uncle Wally understands:
the sad heaviness,
the weight of the body.
But the sweetness, too.
God opens a door: the birds, say,
and the sun in the morning,
or the pretty young girls who always take his orders,
their blonde hair so shiny and soft,
and the light is falling on the tablecloths and the plates,
it’s blinding and white,
and the yolks of the eggs are running,
the yolks of the eggs are so sweet and pure
he could eat and eat and eat.