The Bread of Angels
AT that lost hour disowned of day and night, The after-birth of midnight, when life's face Turns to the wall and the last lamp goes out Before the incipient irony of dawn -- In that obliterate interval of time Between the oil's last flicker and the first Reluctant shudder of averted day, Threading the city's streets (like mine own ghost Wakening the echoes of dispeopled dreams), I smiled to see how the last light that fought Extinction was the old familiar glare Of supper tables under gas-lit ceilings, The same old stale monotonous carouse Of greed and surfeit nodding face to face O'er the picked bones of pleasure... So that the city seemed, at that waste hour, Like some expiring planet from whose face All nobler life had perished -- love and hate, And labor and the ecstasy of thought -- Leaving the eyeless creatures of the ooze, Dull offspring of its first inchoate birth, The last to cling to its exhausted breast. And threading thus the aimless streets that strayed Conjectural through a labyrinth of death, Strangely I came upon two hooded nuns, Hands in their sleeves, heads bent as if beneath Some weight of benediction, gliding by Punctual as shadows that perform their round Upon the inveterate bidding of the sun Again and yet again their ordered course At the same hour crossed mine: obedient shades Cast by some high-orbed pity on the waste Of midnight evil! and my wondering thoughts Tracked them from the hushed convent where there kin Lay hived in sweetness of their prayer built cells. What wind of fate had loosed them from the lee Of that dear anchorage where their sisters slept? On what emprise of heavenly piracy Did such frail craft put forth upon this world; In what incalculable currents caught And swept beyond the signal-lights of home Did their white coifs set sail against the night? At last, upon my wonder drawn, I followed The secret wanderers till I saw them pause Before the dying glare of those tall panes Where greed and surfeit nodded face to face O'er the picked bones of pleasure... And the door opened and the nuns went in. Again I met them, followed them again. Straight as a thought of mercy to its goal To the same door they sped. I stood alone. And suddenly the silent city shook With inarticulate clamor of gagged lips, As in Jerusalem when the veil was rent And the dead drove the living from the streets. And all about me stalked the shrouded dead, Dead hopes, dead efforts, loves and sorrows dead, With empty orbits groping for their dead In that blind mustering of murdered faiths... And the door opened and the nuns came out. I turned and followed. Once again we came To such a threshold, such a door received them, They vanished, and I waited. The grim round Ceased only when the festal panes grew dark And the last door had shot its tardy bolt. "Too late!" I heard one murmur; and "Too late!" The other, in unholy antiphon. And with dejected steps they turned away. They turned, and still I tracked them, till they bent Under the lee of a calm convent wall Bounding a quiet street. I knew the street, One of those village byways strangely trapped In the city's meshes, where at loudest noon The silence spreads like moss beneath the foot, And all the tumult of the town becomes Idle as Ocean's fury in a shell. Silent at noon -- but now, at this void hour, When the blank sky hung over the blank streets Clear as a mirror held above dead lips, Came footfalls, and a thronging of dim shapes About the convent door: a suppliant line Of pallid figures, ghosts of happier folk, Moving in some gray underworld of want On which the sun of plenty never dawns. And as the nuns approached I saw the throng Pale emanation of that outcast hour, Divide like vapor when the sun breaks through And take the glory on its tattered edge. For so a brightness ran from face to face, Faint as a diver's light beneath the sea And as a wave draws up the beach, the crowd Drew to the nuns. I waited. Then those two Strange pilgrims of the sanctuaries of sin Brought from beneath their large conniving cloaks Two hidden baskets brimming with rich store Of broken viands -- pasties, jellies, meats, Crumbs of Belshazzar's table, evil waste Of that interminable nightly feast Of greed and surfeit, nodding face to face O'er the picked bones of pleasure... And piteous hands were stretched to take the bread Of this strange sacrament -- this manna brought Out of the antique wilderness of sin. Each seized a portion, turning comforted From this new breaking of the elements; And while I watched the mystery of renewal Whereby the dead bones of old sins become The living body of the love of God, It seemed to me that a like change transformed The city's self... a little wandering air Ruffled the ivy on the convent wall; A bird piped doubtfully; the dawn replied; And in that ancient gray necropolis Somewhere a child awoke and took the breast.
Edith Wharton’s other poems:
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