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This photo is a miracle.
Below is a poem written by Paul Monette which describes
how it came to be, and how it was rediscovered.

Brother of the Mount of Olives
 

            Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

                              -----Gerard Manley Hopkins 
 
 

combing the attic for anything extra

missed or missing evidence of us I sift

your oldest letters on onionskin soft-

cover Gallimard novels from graduate school

brown at the edges like pound cake and turn up

an undeveloped film race it to SUNSET

PLAZA ONE-HOUR wait out the hour wacko

as a spy smuggling a chip that might decode

World War III then sit on the curb pouring over

prints of Christmas ‘83 till I hit paydirt

three shots of the hermit abbey on the moors

southeast of Siena our final crisscross

of the Tuscan hills before the sack of Rome

unplanned it was just that we couldn’t bear

to leave the region quite the Green Guide barely

gave it a nod minor Renaissance pile

but the real thing monks in Benedictine white

pressing olives and gliding about in hooded

silence Benedict having commanded shh

along with his gaunt motto ora et labora

pray work but our particular brother John

couldn’t stop chattering not from the moment

he met us grinning at the cloister door

seventy years olive-cheeked bald and guileless

no matter we spoke no Italian he led us

gesturing left and right at peeling frescoes

porcelain Marys a limpid row of arches

across the court like a trill on a harpsichord

little did he know how up to our eyeballs

we were on the glories of Florence the Bach

geometry of the hill towns their heart-

stopping squares with the well in the middle

and a rampant lion on the governor’s roof

we’d already scrutinized every thing and now

before we left wished to see it peopled

going about their business out of time

keeping bees holy offices raisin bread

as if nothing had happened since Galileo

instead this voluble little monk pulling us

into the abbey church its lofty Gothic vault

overlaid in sugared Baroque plaster like a bad

cake then Brother John grips us by the biceps

and sweeps us down the cypress-paneled choir

to the reading desk where the Gutenberg

is propped on feast-days he crouches and points

to the inlay on the base and there is a cat

tail curled seeming to sit in a window

every tiger stripe of him laid in jigsaw

as we laughed our rapturous guide went mew mew

like a five-year-old How long have you been here

we ask a question requiring all our hands

fifty years he tosses off as if time had

nothing to do with it one hand lingering

on my shoulder is it books we like then come

and we patter round the cloister in his wake

duck through a door up a stone stairs and peer

through a grill wrought like a curtain of ivy

into the library its great vellum folios

solid as tombstones nobody copying out

or illuminating today unless perhaps

all of that has died and there’s a Xerox

glowing green in the abbot’s study John

pokes you to look at the door carvings it seems

he is not a bookish man but who has time

to read any more we must descend and see

the frescoes fifty years without the world

pray work pray work and yet such drunken gaiety

gasping anew at the cloister’s painted wall

clutching my hand before the bare-clad Jesus

bound at the pillar by the painter so-called

Sodoma the parted lips the love-gazed eyes

JUST WHAT KIND OF MEN ARE WE TALKING ABOUT

are we the heirs of them or they our secret

fathers and how many of our kind lie beneath

the cypress alley crowning the hill beyond

the bell tower how does one ask such things

with just one’s hands then we took three pictures

me and John John and you you and me click

as the old monk takes my arm I’m certain now

that he likes touching us that we are a world

inside him whether he knows or not not that

I felt molested I can take care of myself

but a blind and ancient hunger not unspeakable

unsayable you think he knew about us Rog

how could he not pick up the intersect

the way we laughed the glint in our eyes as we

played our Italian for four hands but my sole

evidence is this sudden noon photograph

the two of us arm in arm in the cloister

delirious gold November light of Tuscany

washing our cinquecento faces splashing

the wall behind us a fresco of the monks

at dinner high above them in a pulpit

a reader trilling in Latin you can’t even

eat without ora et labora and we look

quite wonderful you with the Green Guide me

clutching the pouch with the passports we look

unbelievably young our half smiles precisely

the same for that is the pierce of beauty

that first day of a rose barely started

and yet all there and Brother John so geeky

with the Canon A-1 did he even see what

he caught we look like choirboys or postulants

or a vagabond pair of scholars here to

pore over an undecoded text not religious

but brotherly enough it’s a courtly age

where men are what they do and where they go

comrades all we look like no one else Rog

here’s the proof in color now the tour is over

we are glided into a vestibule where cards

slides rosaries prayers that tick are gauntly

presided over by a monk senior to John

if not in years then officialdom the air

is strict in here we cut our laughter short

this one’s got us pegged right off this keeper

of the canonical cash drawer withering John

with a look that can hardly wait to assign vast

and pointless rosaries of contrition we buy

the stark official guide to Monte Oliveto

leave a puddle of lire per restauro

for restorations and then we’re free of His

Priestliness and John bundles us off still

merry and irrepressible too old perhaps

to fear the scorn and penitence of those

racked by sins of the flesh who never touch

a thing and ushers us out to the Fiat

bidding us safe journey who’s never been

airborne or out to sea or where Shiva

dances or Pele the fire-god gargles

the bowels of the earth we wave him off

and leap in the car we’re late for Rome flap

open the map but we’re laughing too Did that

just happen or what and we drive away

winding up past the tower towards the grove

of graves where the tips of the cypress lean

in the breeze and a hooded monk is walking

head bent over his book of hours in passing

I see that it’s John wave and grin rividerci

startled at his gauntness fixed on his text dark

his reverie no acknowledgment goodbye

that is the whole story you know about Rome

and flying tourist opening weeks of mail

putting a journey to bed and on and on

but I’ve thought of John ever since whenever

the smiling Pope makes another of his sub-

human attitudes the law he drives our people

from the temples and spits on the graves of his

brother priests who are coughing to death in cells

without unction and boots the Jesuit shrink

who calls all love holy he wants his fags

quiet shh and I try to think of John

and the picture he saved three years for me

till the lost roll of Tuscany came to light

and turned out to hold our wedding portrait

the innocent are so brief and the rigid world

doesn’t marry its pagans any more but John

didn’t care what nothing we professed he joined

us to join him a ritual not in the book

but his secret heart it doesn’t get easier Rog

even now the night jasmine is pouring

its white delirium in the dark and I

will not have it if you can’t I shut all

windows still it seeps in with the gaudy

oath of spring oh help be somewhere near

so I can endure this drunk intrusion

of promise where is the walled place where we

can walk untouched or must I be content

with a wedding I almost didn’t witness

the evidence all but lost no oath no ring

but the truth sealed to hold against the hate

of the first straight Pope since the Syllabus of

Errors this Polack joke who fears his women

and men too full of laughter far brother

if you should pass beneath our cypresses

you who are a praying man your god can

go to hell but since you are so inclined

pray that my friend and I be still together

just like this at the Mount of Olives blessed

by the last of an ancient race who loved

youth and laughter and beautiful things so much

they couldn’t stop singing and we were the song