BRIAN DOYLE AUGUST 01, 2011
Poem for Grace Farrell (1976 ¢â‚¬“2011)
A thin column in the newspaper; she died in an alcove
Outside Saint Brigid’s Church. She was from Wicklow.
She had been an artist. She came here at age seventeen.
She drank. She married a man who slept on the avenue,
Not near the church. He didn’t like the church and said
That the church talked to him at night in a stern rumble.
He beat her. Her friends on the street beat him and told
Him to stay away from her. Her alcove had a roof on it,
In a sense, as there was a construction scaffold above it.
The folks like us ¢â‚¬” nobody knows us until we are dead,
Said a friend of hers on the street. Her family in Ireland
Accepted her body, from the medical examiner’s office.
We told them that she was homeless, but they chose not
To believe that, said the examiner. Her name was Grace.
So that’s the end of the article. But what if that’s not the
End at all? What if the old church spoke to Grace Farrell
That night, held her in its southern arm, sang very gently
To her as she died, caught her spirit as it hit the scaffold,
And handed it up, weeping for the sweet broken woman?
Couldn’t that be? Couldn’t it be that we don’t know who
She was and wanted to be, and maybe she was a wonder?
That could be. Maybe she was what she was invited to be.
Maybe her soul said yes to pain in this world to save kids
Somewhere else. Maybe she was brave in ways we never
Will know now. Every time I think I know something for
Sure I get the gift of not being sure at all; isn’t that grace?
Discussion
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