Elegy with the Incredulity of Saint Thomas

Last night, my grandfather came back from the grave

wearing the tailor-made Mao suit he was buried in.

The grasses between us swayed in their crisis

of faith. Under the mulberry tree’s ceaseless sighing

he turned round & round to show me not a hair

was missing. That from thousands of outstanding

applicants, death had chosen him to be kind to.

It was a great distinction: he alone was dusted & set free.

Though I thought it was a dream (for he spoke so clearly

through the stoma—the stigmata on his throat

exposing a cave of red ores) it was not a dream.

Around us, fireflies frisked the dark

with moon-breaths. Vaporous voices rose

then fell silent like aborted hopes. I thought of Christ, bare-

chested in Caravaggio’s painting, his disciples gathered

around him in an awe-struck half circle to marvel

at the celestial glow of his flesh, & Thomas thrusting a finger

into the god’s gaping wound as if to examine

the gullet of a sedated beast or to measure

the breadth & depth of the infinite, his lapidary’s gaze

trained on the vanishing point where reason ends

& belief begins. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet

have believed, said the god unto the doubter as my grandfather

spoke plainly to me, as the stars above continued

their thankless task of interpreting with light

the night’s all-negating immensity.

& who am I to trust my own fragile senses

over his irrefutable presence? Who am I, riddled

with mortal courage, to doubt?