Gaudete
By Betsy K. Brown
Written for Notre Dame
When I hear it in a carol or a chant I am
Reminded of its English offspring, gaudy.
Gaudy, like a chasuble stitched of proud silks
Sailed in from the Orient, like the diamond crust
Of an almost-ancient crucifix mounted on high,
Like woven array of a hundred voices raised
In the rood loft, the puffed chest of the ambulatory
And all its stalwart ribs standing guard over
The garden, gaudy.
But gaudete is also the hair shirt, the candle-stub,
The threadbare mantilla, the infant-cry in the narthex,
The catacombs’ walls of soil, stone, bone.
Gaudete is the smoke-stained relic rescued
From fire, waiting in a dry, gray, dull vault
Somewhere in France, blessing the space with
Whatever moth and rust cannot destroy.
Betsy K. Brown is a teacher and chair of humanities at an Arizona high school, and a graduate of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, with a focus on creative nonfiction. Her published writing includes work for Circe Institute and Autumn Sky Poetry. You can read more of her work at betsykbrown.com.
