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Insipit*

1

It is a strange week in the strange

Season of death. In the heat of March

Or April (Lent, being lunar, is a moveable

Feast), the town abuzz with idle

Schoolchildren, the air is filled

With the wails of the Pabasa or Pasyon,

The chanting of the life and last hours

Of Christ in the arcane melding of a dirge

For a dying-but-rising-again God

And the guttural half-tones of shamanic

Incantation: Insipit! It begins. Insipit!

 

In our neighborhood they are bringing

Out from year-long storage

The image of San Juan Evangelista,

The clean-shaven almost feminine

Saint that stood beside the Mater Dolorosa

At the Crucifixion, would escort her

On the lonely walk around the town before

Midnight in search of the holy grave

During the Soledad, accompanied

Only by the matraca for in God’s death

The bells may not be rang.

 

Brought out of mothball, cleaned with oils,

Corn hair brushed, gleaming robes

Draped on his delicate form, San Juan

Looks heavenward in ecstasy, O handsome—

The handsomest in the procession

In the soft or harsh glow of globe lamps

Provided by the obstreperous electric

Generator astride the cart trailing

His caro—he was O so handsome (the sagalas

Kept staring) because he was our neighborhood

Saint. And the chanting drones on, Insipit!

San Juan Evaangelista, 

from travelandpositiveliving.com.

Probably made in the traditional way of wood carvers,

he looks so much like the San Juan in our  town. 

2

At the other side of town, in the arid

Noon or in the glare of flourescent 

And carbide lamps, the Santo Entiero 

Is in death’s slumber inside his vitrine tomb

Atop a maroon catafalque, for the veneration

Of the milling faithful. Around him now, 

In the ritual of Insipit, the entire Holy Thursday 

Afternoon will initiate the Sacred Wake

With the marathon dirge-and-incantation, 

And our pagan subconscious and pre-history

Will once again begin to resonate, in harmony

And dissonance, with the yearly lamentations

Of our syncretic faith. Insipit!

 

The town hurries with last-minute 

Replenishment of larders and estantes, 

And the mixing of rice flour cakes,

Sweets for the lamenters, an overpopulation

Of children and hangers-on, before the world

Stops on Good Friday when the Christ expires 

On the Cross at three o’clock, after the last 

Privileged lay preachers conclude their

Rehearsed elocutions, and the cura parroco 

Enunciates the Consumatum Est.

 

3

Insipit/Incipit. Here begins the gloom.

Here the incipient doom of God’s

Death upon us. We, Shaman, Gregorian 

Chanter, Pilgrim Penitent, Amateur 

Agnostic, half-remembering our inchoate 

Latin, must sing or murmur our incantations,

Ward off the dangers of heaven’s vacancy

On earth, the Lenten risk of the Devil

Taking over! Insipit/Incipit!  O don’t let it 

Happen, don’t let the Bad One in

On that languorous, somnolent, lugubrious 

Thursday Afternoon at the beginning of God’s

Absence. Keep ye all inside! Close all doors!

Mark with verse and melody of the Insipit/

Incipit our vigilant, pious, but never insipid,

Faith. Insipit/Incipit! And it all begins.

 

 

Marne Kilates

March 2, 2014

*Belatedly I looked up Oxford and found this definition: Incipit: the opening words of a text,

manuscript, early printed book, or chanted liturgical text. 

​

"Before the development of titles, texts were often referred to by their incipits, as with for example Agnus Dei." (Wikipedia) 

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