On Suffering

Somewhere in a city filled 
with spires, in a cathedral left 
of the square, is a smaller chapel 
with the statue of a wild boar 
and a painting of the Virgin with seven 
lances stuck in her heart. This must be
extremely painful, and yet she looks up
toward the ceiling, or the sky, or heaven
as though her sorrows have lifted her 
to a weirdly tranquil space beyond everyday
understanding. And somewhere in another city 
is a very old street which bears the name 
of suffering, because a bishop was 
decapitated there on the way to becoming 
a saint. A famous writer used it 
as the setting for a story about a lost 
necklace: his two characters coming home 
from a ball scour every inch of the street 
in the cold pall of morning, then 
surrender to a life of penury— and they 
must bear it, for is there any other recourse? 
Which only goes to show how the saintly are not 
so different after all from the rest of us 
merely trying to make it from day to day: 
they love their children so much
though they know their hearts will be 
irremediably broken. They go into the streets, 
speaking of what they believe. They give in 
to a bit of desire, wanting to feel, even 
for a few hours, the gleam of something 
extraordinary around their necks.