The St. Francis Way: Young nun singing alone in a church in Gubbio

Her voice, singing, was like
a rising sun.
It covered everything,
though everything, in the church,
was still dark.

She was no more than 25,
and her youth, in her voice,
hummed the day along,
and in her song,
the sad evening shades

to come. Her voice was strong.
Her whole heart was in it,
though she read from a notebook
words I did not understand.

It rose on its own echo
then fell, joining joy
and sorrow, placid as a sea-
swell, while her hands held
the guitar,

then put it away again.
She sang that one song only,
at which, thinking of my father,
I wept, for we are as struck by
Beauty as we are by

Death.

---

William Prendiville is the author of Atlantic Winds and Love is Nothing but the Fruit of a Long Moment. Other poems include Hamlet, T.S. Eliot, and Landslide.