No one predicted we’d be sitting there,
just come in from a blizzard to that bar,
and three beached fishermen in the corner
would interrupt their beans to stare at us,
then return to eating, since we were strange,
but cold enough to be left alone,
and that to expect their calm dismissal
of our being there showed we understood
how things worked then, in the dead decades,
after most of the city had vanished
on trains, or had been drowned in foreign ports;
and therefore, when the priest arrived
with his ice-crusted shawl and frozen cross,
crooning mangled hymns, his head gone to praise,
we’d think it right to offer him a seat,
would carry his stiff gloves to the fire,
and fill his glass with wine and pass him bread,
and would suffer the blessings he put
upon the empty wombs of our soup bowls;
and who knew we’d pretend to sing each verse
of the tune he’d use to condemn us,
but would have no answer to his slammed fist,
nor the thing he’d yell to be overheard
by everyone there—when you stand this close
to the other side, don’t embarrass yourselves
with hope—as if that would be saying it all,
as if he knew we already stood there,
as if we could mount some kind of defense
before snow turned back to water in his beard.
from Birmingham Poetry Review