A Face to a Name(7): The saint as cat

Dorothy Day

If I had a half-moon, e.g. for every prayer, and sleek sleek knees,
  it'd be no business of mine but I'd do it:

hammer the silver, i.e. and cup the flame til we burnt out night,
   and sit cross-legged, respectful & quiet

The cat's silence is also admonitory and cute, you see, & formidable
  She's all fours and her slantwise self--

both saint and cat are, in truth, & tight-mouthed enough for
  God and hospitality homes

The Ghost of a Warhol

                                                 (for Agnieszka, who inspired it)

Out by ten, odds are his warehouse hadn't changed into some Pauline mood

No blanch Madonna caviglie or soft Dorothy Day eyes (after the Masters):

it seems he couldn't have prayed either without etching elvis instead,
  marilyn or a ruddy calf love

and he didn't

Tuvo retuvo

 

There has to be sometimes a way to salvage things like friendship or innocence from the butchery of the world. That's really what I'm trying to do here, really. Substitute a purity (as I see it) for the recent spectacle of a man being burned alive, In fact, make them the same...

 

Only a poem can do it.

______________________________

 

There's a friend from the south

   kept

in loving-kindness & mildness
   with me

(and meant to be as such);

a sun-warmth and a table, in
  fact! a relief

from the eye-scratch and glare--
   baby-breath not

just collapsible into death nor
   ever can be:

never to be just out there, alone
   burnt in a cage