Desperate men run mad for Heaven: Henri
came in the fifth century to Le Mans,
and, when the doddering bishop left him free
to work as he would, he stripped down every man
who set up for a priest, beat out his blood,
and rolled him over and over in the mud.

Nor was he utterly mad, Henri: his God
went off like a hot corn-kernel in his head;
and so, he thought, must spirit explode from mud
when comes the resurrection of the dead;
when all the absolutions since the flood
are resolved in the all-resolving flood of blood.

Given his reasons, then, he acted well.
We’re all of us victims of analogy;
and a spirit-mad messiah like Henri
who summons down his Heaven and raises his hell
is really no worse than you and I when we,
split up on the rocks of faith, part company—

you damning me to perdition forever, me,
a proud perdito, proclaiming I’m not lost.
Desperate, both of us, and desperate most
when the mud of love weighs on us heavily,
we struggle to kick free and strike a fist
against a Heaven of love we think we’ve missed.

So you kneel on rough stone before a priest
who offers a dry wafer. Meanwhile, I
stare blindly at each church I stumble by
on my way back from the bar. But one of us, at least,
is probably right: you with your faith, or me
with my scruples and my stories of Henri.