Now see, here’s Hania, the good servant.
And those aren’t frying pans, you know, they’re halos.
And that’s a holy image, knight and serpent.
The serpent means vanity in this vale of woes.
And that’s no necklace, that’s her rosary.
Her shoes have toes turned up from daily kneeling.
Scarf dark as all the nights she sits up, weary,
and waits to hear the morning church bells pealing.
Scrubbing the mirror once, she saw a devil:
Bless me, Father, he shot a nasty look.
Blue with yellow stripes, eyes black as kettles—
you don’t think he’ll write me in his book?
And so she gives at Mass, she prays the mysteries,
and buys a small heart with a silver flame.
Since work began on the new rectory,
the devils have all run away in shame.
The cost is high, preserving souls from sin,
but only old folks come here, scraping by.
With so much of nothing, razor-thin,
Hania would vanish in the Needle’s Eye.
May, renounce your hues for wintery gray.
Leafy bough, throw off your greenery.
Clouds, repent; sun, cast your beams away.
Spring, save your blooms for heaven’s scenery.
I never heard her laughter or her tears.
Raised humble, she owns nothing but her skin.
A shadow walks beside her—her mortal fears,
her tattered kerchief yammers in the wind.