Saint Edmund Campion Day
I spent all morning at a training on bloodstain patterns, which is fitting, because the story goes that when Jesuit Edmund Campion was martyred in London 425 years ago today, a young Henry Walpole was present, and was splashed with some of the martyrs blood. The story also goes that Walpole traced his desire to become a Jesuit and a martyr to this moment.
I really love that my birthday falls on Edmund Campion's feast day. (The aura of being born on World Aids Day has yet to fully sink in.) Campion's been a personal hero of mine since I read Evelyn Waugh's biography of him two years ago.
The mass readings from the last few weeks have been incredible. I love the way the apocryphal readings fit in the liturgical year, with the last rush of fire and ice before advent. I've been spending a couple hours a night this week studying for the Dec. 2nd LSAT at the Xaiver University library- I've been staying on the literature floor, in a desk down the aisle from where the Robert Lowell books are kept. Last night, after finishing half of a practice test, with twenty minutes before the library closed, I found the Lowell books and read "Where the Rainbow Ends," which has been on my mind for the last few weeks. It's essentially a liturgical poem, with a wintry night descending on a prophetic Boston, a revelation unfolding. It's the close of Lowell's own liturgical calendar as well, so to speak; the last lines mark essentially the end of his Catholicism. Last night, after three hours of logic puzzles and critical reading exercises, the poem fit just right.
I take the LSAT tomorrow morning. As far as I'm concerned my birthday really starts at 12:30 Saturday, when, unbelievably, the test and all its studying and stress will be over. If you're in New Orleans or near, give me a call- I'll try my hand at prophesy by saying that there's a party with gin martinis and soon-to-be law students in your future.
It's only been five days since I last saw the girl, which was the best early birthday present of all. I see her again, soon. I'm home in under two weeks.
Where the Rainbow Ends
by Robert Lowell
I saw the sky descending, black and white,
Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore
The skulls to jack-o'-lanterns on the slates,
And Hunger's skin-and-bone retrievers tore
The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits
Its victim and tonight
The worms will eat the deadwood to the foot
Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death,
Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath;
The wild ingrated olive and the root
Are withered, and a winter drifts to where
The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans
Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles
I saw my city in the Scales, the pans
Of judgment rising and descending. Piles
Of dead leaves char the air -
And I am a red arrow on this graph
Of Revelations. Every dove is sold
The Chapel's sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold
On serpent-Time, the rainbow's epitaph.
In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.
The victim climbs the altar steps and sings:
"Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast
Who fans the furnace-face of IS with wings:
I breathe the ether of my marriage feast."
At the high altar, gold
And a fair cloth. I kneel and the wings beat
My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give
You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live,
The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.
Site of the Tyburn tree, Edgware Road, London, taken last Easter. St. Edmund Campion SJ was martyred here on Dec. 1st.
I really love that my birthday falls on Edmund Campion's feast day. (The aura of being born on World Aids Day has yet to fully sink in.) Campion's been a personal hero of mine since I read Evelyn Waugh's biography of him two years ago.
The mass readings from the last few weeks have been incredible. I love the way the apocryphal readings fit in the liturgical year, with the last rush of fire and ice before advent. I've been spending a couple hours a night this week studying for the Dec. 2nd LSAT at the Xaiver University library- I've been staying on the literature floor, in a desk down the aisle from where the Robert Lowell books are kept. Last night, after finishing half of a practice test, with twenty minutes before the library closed, I found the Lowell books and read "Where the Rainbow Ends," which has been on my mind for the last few weeks. It's essentially a liturgical poem, with a wintry night descending on a prophetic Boston, a revelation unfolding. It's the close of Lowell's own liturgical calendar as well, so to speak; the last lines mark essentially the end of his Catholicism. Last night, after three hours of logic puzzles and critical reading exercises, the poem fit just right.
I take the LSAT tomorrow morning. As far as I'm concerned my birthday really starts at 12:30 Saturday, when, unbelievably, the test and all its studying and stress will be over. If you're in New Orleans or near, give me a call- I'll try my hand at prophesy by saying that there's a party with gin martinis and soon-to-be law students in your future.
It's only been five days since I last saw the girl, which was the best early birthday present of all. I see her again, soon. I'm home in under two weeks.
Where the Rainbow Ends
by Robert Lowell
I saw the sky descending, black and white,
Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore
The skulls to jack-o'-lanterns on the slates,
And Hunger's skin-and-bone retrievers tore
The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits
Its victim and tonight
The worms will eat the deadwood to the foot
Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death,
Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath;
The wild ingrated olive and the root
Are withered, and a winter drifts to where
The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans
Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles
I saw my city in the Scales, the pans
Of judgment rising and descending. Piles
Of dead leaves char the air -
And I am a red arrow on this graph
Of Revelations. Every dove is sold
The Chapel's sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold
On serpent-Time, the rainbow's epitaph.
In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.
The victim climbs the altar steps and sings:
"Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast
Who fans the furnace-face of IS with wings:
I breathe the ether of my marriage feast."
At the high altar, gold
And a fair cloth. I kneel and the wings beat
My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give
You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live,
The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.
Site of the Tyburn tree, Edgware Road, London, taken last Easter. St. Edmund Campion SJ was martyred here on Dec. 1st.