Between marble veins and gold-leaf whispers,
Francis walked easily, uneasily,
sandals scrapped ancient stone,
while the curial machinery of heaven grinds on
with polished gears, and cardinals like sentries,
scarlet-drenched, watching
an old man’s hands,
weathered,
reaching gently across chasms
(like the Creation of Adam)
that politics carved between breathing bodies.

He carried simplicity like a dangerous weapon
in corridors built for elevation.

The throne,
uncomfortable,
necessary,
half-abandoned.

Reform: a prayer muttered into resistant air.
Time collapsed around him, medieval to modern,
crawling toward something unfinished.
The church: a wounded animal, limping forward.

In empty cathedrals, his whispers echo:
Be humble. Be kind. Be less.
The Jesus-way—dusty feet, open palms—
troubling the waters of orthodoxy.

Now: absence.
Work half done like a dead painter.
Promise fractured in cessation.
Legacy splintering into memory.

Between doctrine and mercy
he stretched himself thin,
a bridge incomplete,
yet somehow spanning the impossible
distances between them and us.

 

25/4/2025