Marly Youmans

Saint Thief

Once there was a set of bones so white

And smooth, so seeming pure and radiant

That even the most corpse-abhorring man

Called them beautiful. Few people knew

To whom the bones belonged, although I do:

The bones belonged to a thief. He was caught

And hanged above long grass at a crossroads,

And as he struggled in the air he thought

Of his good wife and their one living child,

And then he died as his legs ran and ran

As though he could escape and go to them.

His flesh dripped like the rain, and fell away

Under the summer’s steady glare of sun

And cold eye of the moon. The gibbet fell.

A riot of wildflowers mobbed the grass

And pleased such passers-by as still retained

A childhood gift for seeing miracles.

One day a peddler waded into blooms

And spied the bones of the thief and, finding them

Strangely pure and sparkling, collected them.

For, he thought, if nothing else, they’d make

The finest bone meal for his garden soil.

For years they lay in a rough hair-skin bag

In the peddler’s shed, although a single bone

Was bartered to a neighbor for a hen,

And then was pierced and bored to make a flute.

The notes it gave were just as fair and fine

As bones that slept undreaming in the bag,

And signaled a new sweetness in the days

Of spring and summer to the clustered shacks—

Song marking tranquil weather, when the girl

Who owned the flute would play her melodies

After all her household chores were finished.

Even the lightest songs upon the flute

Could bring on tears, and yet the people loved

To hear, and were the better for the hearing.

Eventually the bone-hoard peddler died,

And all his goods were gathered in a heap

And sold to a dealer from the city’s core.

One day, on hearing that an embassy

Commissioned by the church was hunting here

And there for bones of a particular

Saint stoned to death a century before,

He recollected the hair-skin bag and bones,

And followed the procession of the priests

And noble lady who were scouring hill

And hollow for the saint’s mislaid remains.

And he had great good luck because the bones

Were bright and polished, as if they were formed

From moonbeams, so that the assembled priests

And the lady in her silken garments

Cried their surprise when light spilled from the bag,

And soon their hearts were moved to find the bones

Of the thief to be the bones of the missing saint.

The bones were smashed and scattered then, to live

In far-off lands and with a foreign name,

Venerated by poor and rich alike,

Dressed honorably in silver or in gold,

Given reliquaries in shapes of arm

Or foot or star or castellated fort.

Even royals bent the knee to the thief.

Even grandchildren of the thief knelt down

To cross themselves and sigh before his bones.

Now when the thief had been gone from this world

For many years, and many thousands of prayers

Had been implored before his dry remains,

The bones at last began to work their wonders:

Three prisoned girls were healed of leprosy;

A barren queen conceived and bore an heir;

Some sailors wrecked at sea came bounding home;

A sexton heard a faint, heart-rending tune

That drifted from a reliquary arm,

And myriads detected a halo

Of moonshine ringed around a finger bone:

In death, the thief had shanghaied miracles.

The upshot of furor and pother meant

Angelic beings of the Divine Council

And God on his chariot throne in Heaven found

A thing or two to say about the thief.

An angel spoke who’d passed the very spot

Just when the thief ran helpless legs on air.

An instant or a day or a thousand years

Fled away as they mused as one on all

The fume of words that floated up from those

Who begged the thief to intercede with the Lord.

I know about the scattering of bones,

I know about the thief running on air:

I’m the singer and the storyteller.

But did the thief burgle the hearts of those

Who bent near bones in love, and did he creep

Underneath the wing of the Lord Most High

In his daring boldness? And did he steal

That infinite and uncreated heart?

Or did bones change, swaddled in the richest

Prayers of the needy? And did the thief

Himself transform, the spillikins and crumbs

Of his own bones singing to his spirit?

That I can’t tell you. That you must decide.

As for the rest of it, this much I know:

The girl who ruled the flute bequeathed the gifts

Of song and story to her kin, and her

Children to their children; my very own

Great-grandmother then told the tale to me

When I was young. And here am I, grown old,

Tossing its strange, glittering pinch of truth

And enchantment into the air and time.

Marly Youmans is the author of sixteen books of poetry and fiction, including her most recent long poem, Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books), her latest novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius Press), and her newest collection of poems, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia Publishing.) www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com