From “Giornata: On Faith”
11.
The swear jar isn’t empty. Full of flowers
instead of coins it makes a cursed bouquet
of love-me-nots, a tangled vine of credit
extended to one most likely to default.
Such a trifling bargain, flowers for mercy.
O Nature, predatory lender!
Risk is the commuter bus I ride between damnation
and wonder. Stitch my wounds loosely. Give me chastity,
O Lord, says the Berber Saint,
for miracle and sin are kindred. Each is hatched
from a broken law.
Copyright © 2020 by Gregory Pardlo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 19, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Giornata’ translates roughly to ‘a day’s work.’ Although the poems in this series were not written in a day, they represent the daily practice and attention that faith requires. Each section addresses faith in a different context. The speaker in section eleven contemplates what it means to repair or restore faith in a relationship after that faith has been compromised.”
—Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo’s second poetry collection, Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was shortlisted for the 2015 NAACP Image Award.