The Catholic Laureate - by Fr. Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
Fr. Pier Giorgio DiCicco, a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, has
authored 17 books of poetry. He was born in Italy, raised in Montreal,
Boston and Toronto and has taught at the University of Toronto. He is
currently Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto. His poetry is published
by The Mansfield Press
Like the sun, I will come out, and like
a prayer I will wash over the
sundry beauties I have known.
One has your name.
I bless things arbitrarily,
for that is what love does, simply transmits
chronicles of laughter and such,
to the deaf unknowing places.
Soon, I would have hoped, there will be
nothing on the planet that is not hear-say
of what I’ve cared for.
Time is running out, as I walk with a sack
of memory, sewing like a mad planter
the countless joys
of luck and grace.
I could add this poem.
But everywhere I go, I am an articulation
of what has loved me,
each step a witness for me to marvel at,
clear as an open field, with blooms.
You are the angel I gave to a child.
You come back to me, though I thought I’d
lost you. It was not the angel of foreboding
and conclusions as I’d thought. It was not
the angel pointing earthward, or inward or
in any direction. You were the angel of love and pain,
or rather, simply the angel of the obvious
always escaping — that angels are made of the
little bit they pick up on earth and the
silken feathers of above. They are the marrying
point of pain and love, of sacrifice and wonder.
I know you now when I buy you in porcelain
or bronze, in brightening crystal and lead, or
marbled like my eyes, slated for Christ.
I know you now and hope to see you in
all things without wings.
There are no wise men. You are the
days of our lives following the wounded
hope, the wizened and beleaguered — those who
follow their sorrow to the ends of the earth
for an answer and see only themselves in
the night sky, mercy marrying the lust for God;
and the bandaged, ruined feet — coming to a manger
to find more of ourselves, newly innocent
as the clockwork of the skies.
You do not fool me, angels; you see with my eyes
what I would see with grace; my self denuded
and radiant-hearted, and the star of Bethlehem
carried in Kansas, Peoria, Illinois, and places
far and away from me, brought to His care.