23
It is the season of tiredness. Even the stones
Lie heavy. What to say then of human flesh and bones?
The days drag their feet, and the nights nod stupidly
Towards mornings of new vision’s vacancy.
Dis-ease has become standard comfort; disease
Normal health; noise, love-speech on commercial frequencies.
It is the season of tiredness. Mind is an abstract abscess,
And spirit’s joints rub like hemispheres about a rusty axis.
Friendship is a starved dog about the proligerous tenements,
And honor is a sleek cat rubbing against door-jambs of covenants.
Affections are market-patois in the interstices of sub-sonics,
And kisses are intersections reared into Crosses of economics.
It is the season of tiredness. Only rumor and rockets are inspired.
Nothing can happen till God-Man rouses himself and speaks.
And he is so tired.
After the previous poem back to a bit of stone-cold sobriety. Since we have awareness we are heavier even than the stones. This poem is tiring even to read. It is a world without God, or at least true to those moments when we wait in vain for him. It is poetry of the wasteland and we even have some touches of T.S.Eliot – the cat, the tenements, the rusty axis. For crying out loud, even the language is exhausted with a latinate word like ‘proligerous’ (meaning spawning or prolific). Relationships are reduced to transactions and the poem’s words to jargon as in Stanza 6. Images are awkward. The world tries to obsequiously gain entrance to the divine by fawning and bargaining – hence the cat and the ‘covenants’.
Francis is not just down in the dumps. This is a picture of a world in crisis that is in crucial need for the saving action of the God-Man.
Much modern and postmodern literature espouses boredom and chaos. In the name of honesty. Francis always points beyond, although here perhaps, only just. As the next poem insists don’t come to God looking to have benefits.