The Importance of the Body
Ruth Foley
Castle Aragonese, Ischia
Rooms of prayer, rooms of death
desiccate beneath the castle set
so far above Ischia that even these
basement chambers are well above the sea.
The Order of Clarisse were propped here
in death, in these stone-carved chairs,
room after room, left to melt into the spillvase,
until they came rotting clean, until
their sisters carried weary bones
along the hall to join the common
ossuary. These sisters came to pray--
what the smell must have been, the decaying
naked women, corpses slack and weeping
through the holes in the seat, seeping
back to the earth, a reminder of impermanence
and eternity, that the body holds no importance
in this world or the perfect next.
They blessed themselves amidst this death.
Now the salted, whitened walls and silent
chairs hold nothing but old wax from long-spent
candles. My niece, almost twelve, sits
sideways in one on a dare, pretends to lick
another, makes jokes about the nun dust
on her jeans. Someone laughs just
for the sound. Someone else takes a picture.
Here is what I’ve learned from her
about the importance of the body:
It is fragile, thin, pale. It is rowdy
and eleven, solid, full of water, precious,
somehow also round and strong and ageless.
It too will melt, maybe not into this water
off the Bay of Pozzuoli, maybe not with common
daughters,
not with sisters sitting by for company.
My prayer is that she learns this long after me.
Now she flies across the breachway, light
balanced on the rock sea wall, her flight
untouchable, unrestrained. I pray for life
and watch her run and cannot hold her body safe.