Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Tamara Nicholl-SmithFebruary 16, 2023

Now is the lilac hour, the deep
bruise of the afternoon, when the
sun shuddered, turned its lengthening
face from the blotted sky, from the

impending sacrifice at the day’s
ninth hour, and closed its bright eye, closed
the sky’s lid, plunged noon’s peak into
eclipse, into the plum-dark night.

This happened. This is happening.
Then and now merge. It’s time to exit
the forty days. It’s time to strip
the altar. Time to hollow, time

the crocus purples morning, time
the hellebore, the Lenten rose,
bloods its pale petals. Time to yield.
Please, empty me, of everything

and burn this yoke of days, this shade
of living until I become a
clean crucible, a burning bowl
a hallowed column of fire. I give

all I said no to, all I did
not drink, or eat, or keep.
I give my emptiness and pour cold ashes
on fields of violet-bright sadness.

The latest from america

It has been 56 years since humankind went to the moon—but it's still on our minds.
James T. KeaneJuly 22, 2025
Cardinal Pizzaballa and Patriarch Theophilos III gave a press conference after visiting the Holy Family Parish church, which was struck by Israeli forces.
“The definition of desolation is notoriously slippery,” Father James Martin writes. “It is not simply a period of dryness in prayer, which is common to everyone.”
James Martin, S.J.July 22, 2025
I felt two things when Stephen Colbert announced last Thursday that in nine months, CBS would be ending his top-rated “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” I felt uncomfortable. And I felt old.
Jake MartinJuly 22, 2025