John Maher: To Dust
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
“In the nearby village of Zogno, the local priest has decided to ring the death knell just once a day, to keep from ringing it all day long.”
—from “Italy’s Coronavirus Victims Face Death Alone, With Funerals Postponed,” by Jason Horowitz and Emma Bubola, in the March 16, 2020, edition of The New York Times
To Dust
Two weeks earlier the padre dipped
his thumb in a brazier covering it
with ash and signed the cross
on their foreheads and told them
unto dust thou shalt return
as he did once in every year
not knowing how soon this time
the day would come for so many
or whether his was that hand
spreading hell along with earth
or that he would not be let to offer
Christ's body to them before the end
or that lines for the furnaces would
stretch for as many miles as did
the knell of the bell he tolled
all through each day until his arms
became wetter and heavier
his hands redder and rawer
even than his eyes and no more
could he bear the pealing or pulling
save for once when twilight came
as some bitter evensong destined
to be forgotten just as were those
the padre and his bell would go on
into the dark and remember
You can watch/hear John read this poem below:
John Maher is an award-winning journalist and poet living in Brooklyn, NY. He is an editor at Publishers Weekly and The Dot and Line, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine’s Vulture vertical, Esquire.com, and others.
