Dana Delibovi

POETRY

“Arc of Day,” read by Dana Delibovi.

Arc of Day

Anyone who digs a grave
breathes hard, and with a spade
slippery in morning’s mist,
hopes for something, Devil or God,
to rise from azimuth to zenith.

When the high sun blesses
lichens on the tombs, it’s holy
but luciferous, too,
and bathes things
in a molten lake of light.

Think of August, its peculiar
noonday susurrus
like a rattlesnake’s tail.
My father and grandmother
died in that month,

and every year it comes,
they arrange themselves,
in muslin, at the edges of my nap.
As I live on, I sleepwalk
past the crevice cracked

by all my dead. Their wailing
wakes me, painful
the way a new burn feels cold
before the mind
has time to name the fire.

“For Josephville, Missouri,” read by Dana Delibovi.

For Josephville, Missouri

Here they leaded and glazed
Shards of Mary in all her azure.
Here they set inestimable bricks,
To worship her workman husband with hard
And tactile signs of human labor.

Clear priorities are noble and rare,
But just across from the meat processor
The will of God has stood its ground.
You have to hand it to a place without a zip code
Piling up a near-basilica like this.

It’s easy to question the belfry’s price,
To gape with prudence at the roses
Ringing the agate-crusted crucifix,
To ask why floors are etched
With donor’s names, while the people

Of the town are barely scraping by.
But people sense the worth of something
Close and beautiful. They think
(Not in these exact words) while driving a pickup
in clouds of ochre dust:

“There is my blood-red church, my Cross
of polished stones, my Jerusalem flower.”
They know, inside, a spectrum stains
The altar cloth, as light
Flows through the multicolored glass.

The work of hands, done well,
Vivifies an ember near the heart.
And this happens the first time anyone
Goes by this church, before
The rational calculations arise,

Because artists lifted up their tools,
As Joseph did, to serve what is irrational.
They fashioned the gravity
Of well-hewn blocks, the euphoria
At the glint of extravagant windows.

Under the billowed clouds, under the open
Heaven of swallows, from every
Meandering car and bike and drone
Acclaim unfurls, for this village of the saint,
Mowed out of the limitless corn.

Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her new book, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila, 2024. Delibovi’s work has appeared in Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, US Catholic, and many other journals. She is a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist.

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Image by pickpik. Modified by Veronica McDonald.