Offices
Rosanna Warren
In our monastery, crickets rattle
castanets down the long avenues of day and under
the arches of night; in our
monastery squads of dragonflies
patrol the meadow, unzipping
lines of sight while
ferns crinkle into bronze and monardas quail,
Queen Anne's lace frays the surplice of tall grass,
and before Nones the hawk dives into the mountain laurel but swerves
up with angry, empty talons, a flash
of white belly feathers and ankle tufts. In our
monastery, before the storm, maples and white pines thrash
with dry heaves, and thunder rackets around
the cloistered horizon as if an enraged dog
had seized the sky in his teeth and were shaking it back and forth
until the stuffing fell out. But in the long
drought days, silences steepen
into abandoned quarries and old wells. The gaps
between your prime numbers pulse like the spaces between stars.
We live close to the bone.
Your fingers on my spine: primal
shudder of an ancient code. When I rise in the night
and feel my way back to bed in the dark, one hand
on the door, one fumbling along the wall,
it's my mother's ghost who touches me. Do I understand,
now, how she felt in her cavern
of ruined sight? Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work,
or watch, or weep this night. Hide us
under the shadow of your wings. How slowly
we learn. Compline. In the watches
of the night.
from the journal HARVARD REVIEW
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This poem plays off the Holy Offices, the liturgical prayers for set times of the day in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. But the poem is heretical. This “monastery” is out in nature, and this nature is violent and brilliant. The poem ends with lines from the night prayer, “Compline,” a recognition of our vulnerability. There’s a pun on “prime,” indicating prime numbers, and the Prime prayer for 6 a.m.

Rosanna Warren on "Offices"
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