Peter Steele, Jesuit Poet (1939-2012)

Man on Donkey

Beaten, still breathing, as awkward as a dog,

He swags across the donkey, unaware

Of who’s beside them, footsore in the slog

Uphill for shelter and a kind of care.

Under the bloody bandages, some oil

Soothes where wine has washed away the dirt

To leave him clean and mortal. Alien soil,

Continuing fear, is mingling hope with hurt.

Downslope, the priest is hustling on his way,

Clean as a whistle, and the levite too,

Who thought that pausing meant the devil to pay,

And all the hours awarded them too few.

By the plodding beast, wordless and out of time,

The stranger braces once more for the climb.

PRODIGAL

Sick of his father and his brother’s claim,

He lit out for the country, walking tall

As though impossible to halt or tame:

Others, he knew, were riding for a fall.

Out there he sluiced the money every way,

Good as his word, but only for a while:

Pigs at their pods became his only stay,

Experts in how to slobber and defile.

Back home his father, now a yearner, saw

The white nights through and fed the calf a treat,

Paced at the gate until his feet were raw,

Kept sandals, robe and ring beside his seat,

Hoping, the boy returned, by some wild chance

The brooding heir would join them in the dance. 

Lazarus at the Gate

A stub of cabbage and a heel of bread

Would keep him on the wrong side of the grave

A few more shadowy days and nights. Instead,

By staircase, marble sphinx and architrave,

A couple of menials haul the brimming trays,

A couple of guests are hobbling in their haste

Towards the villa where in purple laze

His consort and the arbiter of taste.

Down from the barbered trees, by now unable

To fend away the licking dogs, your man

Can’t bear to think again of the garnished table–

Of wine and olive, pear and ortolan.

Bring me, he prays, to the banquet of the dead,

And feed these others as I have been fed.

______________

Three parables from Luke’s Gospel inspired Peter Steele to write these sonnets.

Perter was an Australian and a Jesuit, he taught English Literature at the University of Melbourne from 1966 until his death in 2012.

He was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Georgetown University and Loyola University Chicago. He published eight collections of poetry. In 2012 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for his service to literature and higher education as a poet, author, scholar.