the wedding

The Wedding
to Umana bint Kualib

West Indies Packet to Montreal
With news about two weeks before Christmas
But six weeks travelling

About effects
Of the promulgation of the doctrine
Seven years before that in Rome

Precisely
In Chile, December eight,
Eighteen sixty five
At the Church of La Compana where
Three thousand two hundred seven
Ladies of the higher classes

Declared virgins, are praying
For Immaculate Conception
Young ladies

and a few men with
the poorer with children
in back

Those richer
Declared in front
without
but one to be revealed

The month for the Virgin
Is ending, a miracle is coming
Everyone knows.

In a Church festooned
With twenty thousand lights
Large candles crescenting
At the foot of Mary

Communicating fire to her draperies
Spreading to all parts
To rain from the roof
In great drops

Escape blocked with outside rescuers
And the men
climbing over the poor

The ladies falling in all directions
Arms torn from bodies into heaps
Roof and steeple cascading

After fifteen minutes only
wall shards remain
climbing upwards
over two thousand black bodies

Upwards of twenty cartloads were removed
by Christmas

And this news arriving
to a declared fiancé in Montreal
far after that Christmas
when he was secretly
made a priest.