Last summer,
in church in Italy,
I prayed for
all of you, asked not for forgiveness
And
strength, but that all the sadness of our days,
All the grief of our lives,
All the
loneliness given us be taken,
Without
judgment — asked for life and light.
That was the first time in twenty-three years something
Like that
happened to me. Not knowing the modern prayers,
I
fell back on the old way of ending prayer, recited:
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
And to the
Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning,
Is
now, and ever shall be, world without end
Then dropped some lire coins in the metal offering box,
Walked
through the heavily curtained doorway into the
Mediterranean
heat, into the hard traffic of the village,
Into
the harsh light of the afternoon
Into
this world without end.
Tom Tammaro, When the Italians Came to My Home Town (Spoon River Press)
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