“The Comedy of Gregory III” by W. Zupp

Walker Zupp is a Bermudian writer. He was educated at Saltus Grammar School and Marlborough College. He has a BA in English Language and Creative Writing, an MA in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Creative Writing. He’s published 4 novels and 2 books on Wittgenstein. He lives in Cornwall.

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The Comedy of Gregory III

I

When Gregory the Third began to die,
Three men knelt by the bed lending their prayers.
The air was clement, the wind white-cruel,
And outside they thought, Gregory’s a fool;
Opening their shutters, combing their hair,
Skimping on prayer: searching for alibis.

Gregory said, How can I believe God
Lives when luxuries weigh down my deathbed.
After ten years of personal papal blunders,
Keeping Islam and her sons down under,
When old Syria was my home, my bread;
The caliphate a child’s sky: and broad.

Marcus said, Acclamation made you Pope:
The cardinals caught your modest figure,
Endorsing this pious mouse on the spot:
To die, now, in luxury is your lot,
Having allowed God to force a future
Befitting the church and its wider hopes.

Gregory said, Dense popularity
Is no barometer for spiritual rule.
If I’m a success, God must hate meek mice.
My failure’s loud, my frustration’s concise.
Hear the townspeople: they call me a fool.
God is dead, and his servant’s piety.

Titus said, You condemned the Emperor,
His levelling of images divine,
And forged a new age of talent and flair:
How one sculpts the Christ; how one paints his hair.
Oratories, icons, frescos: these were not crimes
A God would punish: these were not nightmares.

Gregory said, The Emperor Leo
Was Syrian: a mirror for my flesh,
And all I saw were similarities,
But differences were his priorities.
Divine-cum-human: he was Gilgamesh,
But he chased the wind and found his deathblow.

Quintus said, You blaspheme: but leaving high and dry
The players you disowned on the stage:
Leo annexed Calabria and Sicily,
You did not handle battle skillfully,
A bounded church was forced to preach backstage;
A wind-chaser you were: not bodyguard divine.

Gregory said, All is herding the wind.
Bibles are printed, absolution borne,
The cardinals are named, the Pope conducts;
But free will dominates: a person plucks
Their doggedness like an ear of fated corn,
Then to a homespun cross that fate is pinned.

II

Marcus said, The Exarch of Ravenna
Agreed to your holy consecration,
Delighting in news of hues and singing;
A three-tiered crown chasing six bells ringing.
A submissive shape of coronation
Esteemed from Syria to Vienna.

Gregory said, The coronation was delayed
For a month where stone pines offered no shade
To quizzing from cardinals: When would I
To the Emperor’s backside become a gadfly;
Or how would artistic granite be made
Into Roman walls to end endless raids…

Titus said, You were the face of the church:
And loving art, you made the church facial,
Guarding pictures of God drawn by people:
Your bones the vestments: and faith the needle.
And loving art, you were not palatial.
Your grave is the birdcage: the golden perch.

Gregory said, And I am a starling
Searching for a facial murmuration
Shaping the Holy Ghost: the face of peace.
The Emperor’s crime? He denied release
In the face of God and his causation,
Casting creation in a mold of stranding.

Quintus said, And we are stranded in Rome:
Lombards barking in the Roman duchies,
In the midst of feuds and rumours of feuds.
Transamund was a traitor; and the brood
Of Frankish messiahs are absentees,
Growing poppies in their indifferent loam.

Gregory said, When I was a plain priest,
In my day devoted, but often mute,
I dreamt of the papacy: but your words bore me.
Trapped in amber and jailed by luxury,
I see that dreaming is not praying. Fruit
Rots: whether grown in Rome or in the east.

III

Marcus said, You are the Third Gregory.
The Second fought the same iconic wars
Against Leo: funding books, not artwork.
It’s right to close legacies; not to lurk
In patrimony’s shadows, having dead mentors
Leading worship—wielding the treasury.

Gregory said, But I have not closed them:
If not for my walls, Rome would be conquered.
Can I forge myself free of heritage?
Can a bronze prevail without parentage?
Sorrow grows beyond such statues. Lombards
Are immune to the spiritual income of art.

Titus said, You were the face of the church,
But being Syrian you over-existed,
Bent on out-Romaning the Romani.
But pining to please is not some omen
Set above sinning and thinking twisted.
You were gregarious: you always searched.

Gregory said, I long for my caliphate;
Charming scrub: the forest of Al-Batar,
My new eyes rootless in the Euphrates.
I doubt that God could ever create these.
But I have saved his images: northern stars
Guiding my doubt to that sacred checkmate…

IV

…When the Pope died he saw the Holy Ghost
Rootless in the River Styx—his arms crossed,
Bored of what he had witnessed; his face veiled
Against the weathers on the waters sailed;
His mouth unlocked and ready to accost
The Pope who’d arrived to the undead coast.

The Ghost said, You are the hazy houseboy
Of houseboys who shielded painted idols
When estates and properties were destroyed
By the Emperor’s theological research.
The truth is that the icons were decoys:
You must credit the puzzle of the church.

Gregory said, The only puzzle is your plan.
But the plan exists: the ghost is haunting.
My life was not puzzling: ten years of slog
Would improve the dampness of any bog.
But in this bog—my belief was wanting.
And in my death—simplicity is grand.

The Ghost said, The church is one cadaver
Forced by muscles of faith: its only need.
Some see the lifeless body and gather
Faith is for the dead: whilst others mislead
Their reasoning and become rather kind.
You must credit the muscle of the creed.

Gregory said, I’m just a fingernail.
And God can do without a fingernail
As the blind live by the other senses,
As the amputees go on paying expenses,
And the deaf understand they cannot fail
When a ship is not defined by the sail.

The Pope and the Ghost entered the gloom;
Their skin turned the colour of the moon.
The air was clement, the wind white-cruel;
The far-ranging blackness was a jewel
That made the papacy’s golden perch
Seem ugly and granite and hardly a church.

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