Rafael Squirru    

To Rafael, in your style

 

Even archangels don't stay long

so try to get questions accurate

as with expensive transatlantic calls

or hospital visiting,

even though we know we know

that the best answers seldom come from questions

but in parables, or a shared feast,

on postcards, or over cups of tea.

 

Since life makes the rules, not history,

we need more to check lines still open

than that the rules haven't changed;

rules being part of the game

as the first lesson. Then:

 

courage, to see what's possible,

decorum; filial piety;

at least, to cry and laugh during intervals.

The arts of solitude and shared time

(public life an advanced grade);

guessing the password, while

staying on the Qui Vive.

 

Your theories to prove it: that

our world, like God's, embraces

all of the Karamasovs,

and allows things to come to pass

according to natural forces, the

supernatural, the diabolical,

inertia and karma, all

holy energy, including law-making;

and that all can be over-ruled

by one thought, in an hour,

or in a grain of sand.

 

That best contains most.

That God has a sense of humour,

and likes it in others.  Bottom no fool,

nor Siegfried ludicrous, if sung from the heart.

 

That saints may be doves or serpents.

That pigs are dangerous.

Irony, like activity, a peril

and a quiet life a work of genius.

 

Mental bricks: Faith, respect, pride;  Hope,

balance, imagination; Love, a creed and a talent.

To diagnose without killing,

build without losing ground.

 

With questions as answers, write

legibly, on one side only,

in the right order

and with an eye on the clock.

 

                              Catherine Ward, 1978

 

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