Poems of Hope Contest: A Thief to the Heart of Brother André, Arden Medres

Arden Medres is a poet and fictionist from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The sequence here published was born at the height of his enthusiasm for the dramatic sonnet.

A Thief to the Heart of Brother André

Quebec, 1974

I.

If the door to heaven is the heart of Jesus,

And the key is love and prayer, have I tried

To pick the Sacred Heart that may just free us

With feeble twigs? Does He feel me in his side, 

Stabbing to prove Him dead, but also craving

At the same time a shower of holy water?

Am I, who cannot ever merit saving

After this act uncivil as a slaughter,

To suffer from ghosts until they certify

Me madder than the average believer?

The locks at your museum would comply

To me, but now a paralyzing fever

Comes over me to touch the reliquary,

Whose seal I dare not break to hold what it must carry.

II.

But why do I stop here, who have transgressed 

Already over mortal lines, and leave

The fruit unplucked, which to rub against my breast 

Would make the demons in it all to grieve

The loss of the home that they have cherished much?

Is it because the holiness that wafts

From you, oh heart, needs not the proof of touch, 

As it is evenly suffused aloft?

Have I now breathed sufficient molecules

Of yours and Jesus' in my short life

To heal my soul and join His holy fools?

Or is it that I recognize the strife

That I will cause for others? Am I kept

From opening it, by the flood that will be wept?

III.

Or is it fear of a hell more eternal

Than that I flee by hellish means, by greed,

(That ever was the prodigal son of need)

That stops my hand, that renders me nocturnal, 

Vampiric, no more human, fit to burn

If soon the light of day shall find me out,

And the coppers' dogs will shove their nosy snouts 

All through my things? What if they never learn 

My little identity? God will still know

Every last sin that I have ever sinned

And thought would evanesce into the wind; 

But will He have forgiveness to bestow,

If not forgetfulness? Humanity,

For heaven's sake do not remember me.

IV.

Or is it remorse, and genuinely willing

To change at heart, since fifty thou', though filling 

My belly for years, is yet insufficient

To trade my priceless, proofless soul; a cent 

Would be too little, like a million dollars. 

Brother André, you had so many callers

Because your prayers were so efficacious;

So many testimonies held veracious

Confirmed that miracles exist because

God chose you for them. Why? It ever was

The case with love divine, that it should fall 

Unequally, like the sun on us all,

According to the weather of our luck,

But we may find Him in the dark and muck.

V.

I knew this choice was coming, like a fork

In life's long forest, where one path would lead 

Surely to death, and the other's sign would read 

Something like 'doubtful life.' But I can't work

Out which is which. If I get rid of you

To keep the fingerprints from being found,

Would that be a depth that grace would fail to sound?

It feels like it, a thing I cannot do,

For in my heart I know I will regret it.

Yes, I could drop you in the deepest ocean,

But it would haunt me ever; your devotion

To Saint Joseph from your childhood's to credit.

I see him in dreams, and he looks sadly at me,

As though I were a fly; if not for God, he'd swat me.

VI.

But I know well my dreams are only dreams, 

And Joseph was a man that none can know

In dreams save those, who once, with faith aglow, 

Lived when God lived in light of certainty's beams. 

Spirits choose dreamers to inhabit by

Their inner virtue; Joseph must scorn mine, 

That his dream form cannot be called divine;

He is my brain's own manufactured lie,

And yet he always tells strange truth to me,

Like how I must risk damnation on this earth

In order in the other to have rebirth,

How without evil free will could not be, 

And how his son might still give pardon for 

A life of sins, that there may be no more.

VII.

But, darkness, be my friend, and hide away

All trace of me that tracks back to my crime. 

Not on this earth will I dare do the time;

But if for this in hell I make a stay,

I trust it will not be forever, but

That Brother André will intercede, for I

Call even on you, who I defiled. Why?

So many reasons; the doors of heaven shut

Only for one: I chose the thing I chose,

With consciousness that it would be a good

To me, but to all the world beside it would

Call for more punishment than pain can pose. 

But now some light escapes the crack of the doors; 

I will be ready for it when it pours.

VIII.

And it will pour and cover me entire,

To punish or reward, in fashions which

Appeal to our experience, like fire,

But who's to say hell will not be a fridge?

Is God then as sadistic as we are,

As some of His devoted make Him seem,

Leaving with pious arrogance such scars

On infant minds, that faith will be a dream

That they wake from, but never fast enough?

Not like these twenty months, that came to wake 

Me from my atheism; it was a bluff,

And I even fooled myself so I could take

You from your shrine, and worship only Mammon, 

And fatten up throughout a giant famine.

IX.

Remember last December? There was a 

Woman who wrote that all she wanted for 

Christmas was the return of you, and swore 

That for the perpetrators she would pray

If we would end our miserable joke.

It wasn't a joke, but I thought that I might laugh 

About it someday, as if it were a gaffe,

A little slip, that never could provoke 

Censure from those that truly cared for people. 

But I was wrong, and relics now must be 

Secured efficiently from folk like me,

Who long to be impaled up on a steeple.

That woman has waited so very long, as I 

Have to be caught, to be paid. Is the end nigh?

X.

No, if they paid, they'd have us, and they won't, 

Due to their principles. They'll let us go,

The cops and churchmen, because it would show 

That they work well together, and they don't. 

If I was caught, it would be a relief;

Oh, must I wait uneasy now forever

Till someone lurking in our midst deliver

The fateful tip, and bust this gentle thief.

Yes, I was certain miracles were lies,

Or I would not have stolen you, but now

I read of those you healed and ask not how, 

And the sure testimony of my eyes

Is less important now. For all the chatter, 

There's magic in the mind, if not in matter.

XI.

I was looking at the Oratory's dome

Rising above the summit of Mont Royal,

Where the Cross stands; now there are less builders loyal 

To the old code. Soon Montreal will be home

To many Babels making the dome look small,

Or the Basilica of Notre Dame,

Which for a hundred years could boast the nom

Of tallest, when the Royal Bank would fall

Its record, which is too long to exceed

These days, when there are so many of us,

Who need more space but not a God to love us.

And as I looked I felt my nose to bleed,

But I touched it, and it was only clear,

And I knew my conscience could not be all sere.

XII.

There is more joy in heaven for our repentance 

Than joy for our virtue, since beginnings are 

So very hard, like making Earth and the stars, 

But they may be as simple as a sentence.

Let there be night, that I may wake in tears 

Due to prophetic dreams I must fulfil, 

Compelled to sit beneath the windowsill, 

Because the beauty through the glass would peer 

Into my ugly soul, and make me sick,

As gaudy churches used to do; I see

None of God's money spent vaingloriously, 

Only the splendour, and if I hear their music--

Even a couple of notes--it is too much,

And ever will be, while you are in my clutch.

XIII.

You ordered them to be healed, and they were;

I wonder how many had to fall right over

After they gave their crutches, to discover

That their faith was weak, but you were no poseur. 

You had a righteous fury for those like me,

Who do believe that miracles can come 

Through any person's prayer, not just some;

It was only then that you ever spoke angrily. 

Was it unnatural piety, those spurts

Of strong vexation at poor heretics?

Could you not laugh and draw a crucifix,

And say, "Oh, child, tell me where it hurts

So much that you are driven crazy now,

To think that humans are divine somehow."

XIV.

Father Lalonde has publicly written to us,

That we should leave you in the Oratory

And phone it in. Yes, that would be a story,

But plainclothes pigs or cassocked would subdue us, 

And I won't take the bait! But he has written

So many things I have already thought,

That I can't help but ponder a good spot

To leave you in my hope I won't be smitten. 

What day is best for it? Christmas is coming, 

And I don't feel like being a grinch this year,

But none must know the reason of my cheer. 

Why didn't we do it sooner? I feel like humming, 

Because the day of hope that the solstice is

Is on us now, that tells of lengthened bliss.