Cecil John

From “On the Edge”

MEN never know what’s written in their stars.

Paul was a cadet of an old French line;

A lad, he was devout, on fire to serve,

Became père blanc, wore robes, and grew a soft brown beard.

Three times in Africa he learned new tongues

To bring the blacks to Christ;

He baptized greasy babes, confirmed half-naked urchins,

Wed savages in skins and beads

And heard thick-lipped confessions….

He heard one too many—

A slim young jade in scarlet calico,

Bare-shouldered, saucy-eyed,

Came whispering.

Later he in his turn confessed the wrong he’d done,

The coming trouble. One child more or less

To native wenches would not shake the world;

But his superior was virtuous—

Paul was unfrocked, no longer a père blanc.

He married that black girl;

He brought their black brat to the Holy Fount,

By his small hut—he tried to keep it clean;

He grew good vegetables to sell to the few Europeans of the post.

At last he shot himself.

Not in the consecrated ground

Could he find burial,

But on a lonely hillside, weighted down

With stones to keep the beasts away.