Public Radio,
Sunday Morning

“Sunday Baroque” on the radio,
making pancakes with the last
of last summer’s berries, we stop,
silent, as Allegri’s Miserere fills the house
with the accompanying hot light
of this eleventh September.

Miserere mei, Deus: secundum
magnam misericoridiam tuam.

Nine unaccompanied voices
sang the first Miserere for Tenebrae
in the Sistine Chapel, Holy Week, 1638,
the year John Milton came to Rome
after meeting blind Galileo.