MIDNIGHT MASS AT THE CATHEDRAL
First Prague winter. Christmas carp
swim in street-corner vats
until overalled men slice them open
toss scales and guts into gutter
and hand over flesh for holiday
feasting. Beggars on cathedral steps.
I enter St. Vitus late with my young
ex-pat friends who have never been
to midnight service. Colder
inside than in the snow-shining outside
dark. Cavernous nave aglow with mink
ermine, sable. The priest up front
where people sit in pews.
Kyrie Eleison swells and I taste the full
palimpsest of Catholic Mass. Fur
and night-black, stained-glass, songs
reach into the darkness we have
entered, not to worship,
but to mingle and murmur
our separate languages, our separate
selves. We cluster close
so much less dead than carp
or the smiling fox heads
on the shoulders of ladies with big
handbags, feathered hats and wool
skirts. We are begging or bundled
against the night, bruise of chill
water and burrow, scale and bone.
Together we make a throbbing
robe, a congregation of skin and heat
and hunger—this prayer
almost enough to warm us.