Tintinnabulations

TINTINNABULATIONS

I

On a Wednesday in forty-nine,

in a fierce mid-morning July sun,

my family is gathered

in front

of Sacred Heart Church.

The bell is ringing as it has rung

all the Sundays of my life;

but, as I said, this is a Wednesday;

my dad's funeral

has torn asunder

faith's firm schedule;

the bell is ringing on and on;

much longer

than a Sunday's bell,

on and on and still on

as if it will not be stopped.

I had seen the thick rope

that fell limply from the steeple,

down along the back wall

of the choir loft,

and then into an anteroom

off the vestibule.

I had liked it that when

we passed into church

I might catch a glimpse

of the campanologist

at work.

II

Now, on this funeral day,

I hear my older sister Martha

announce smugly:

"It's a-gonna ring

seventy-one times."

She had always been anxious

to let it be known

how much she knew

which you probably didn't know;

she was not one to miss

the opportunity

of a moment's

superiority.

"Why? I asked.

"Because Dad was seventy-one

when he died. It's a-gonna

ring once for each year

that he was alive."

Martha then jerked her head

slightly up and back,

and then to the left, and,

ever so briefly,

closed her eyes.

This was

condescendence.

III

Touched that all this pealing

was customized, personalized,

honoring my dad,

I adjusted my senses to receive

the blessed sacrament

of loss.

I tucked into my pockets

the melancholic echoes

of those peals.

I was stashing melancholy,

making a deposit

into an account

from which I might

make withdrawals

for the rest of my life.

IV

Exactly forty years later --

but in the charmless new

round Sacred Heart

that had replaced the old one --

my mother's casket,

draped in a fine linen pall,

stood in the vestibule.

At eleven o'clock

the bell was sounded

eighty-one times --

or did I, remembering

Martha and the seventy-one

bells of forty-nine --

did I merely imagine

eighty-one peals

on my mother's funeral day?

I don't think I actually counted.

Today, twenty years later,

I'm not sure.

Memory fails.

And did I not hear then,

in nineteen eighty-nine,

electronic bells?

Had a switch

been merely flicked,

or a button

pushed cursorily,

to set off that day's

pealing?

Did I so want instead

for a man to be standing

in some side room

somewhere,

grasping a heavy cord of hemp,

counting carefully

to eighty-one,

taking pride in his

campanology?

Yes, did I so want this

that I imagined

eighty-one?

Did I so want this

that my ears

refused to hear

the true tintinnabulations

of modern times?

Did my imagination take over

to forestall distress

that yet another

mysteriously

meaningful/meaningless

ritual

had been dumped

into the landfill

where discarded rituals

are bulldozedly buried?

Did I merely want to forestall

an acute reminder that,

while I was not looking,

while I was not paying

certain attentions,

while I was not keeping

the sacraments,

the past, bit by bit,

had been stolen?

V

My brain is full.

Some things

have toppled out,

fallen aside, flown away.

I have retained, though,

the bells of forty-nine,

and the bells

of eighty-nine.

Every day I

pull them

from my pocket;

every day,

a melancholy racket.