Reverend Goss's Confessional

Lyrics

It’s nine-thirty. Wednesday.
The last candle sputters by the chalice.
Bless me, Father, for I have…
...remained silent for too long.

This oak box smells of beeswax and a century of fear.
My fingers trace the grooves in this lattice.
A screen to keep the shame from passing through whole.
I can feel the cold from the stone floor through my cassock.
I hear the drip of rainwater near the vestry.
One drop for every word I cannot find.
One drop for every book I should not have opened.

And the words themselves are the sin.
The root and the branch of them.
The ink on the page from 1551.
The sound they make in an empty room.
I hold them in my mouth like river stones.
Smooth and profane and ancient.
How does one ask for absolution from a dictionary?

I read that at Saint Mary’s Church in Oxford, between 1740 and 1755…
They kept the parish brooms in a booth just like this one.
Brooms and dustpans.
To sweep the nave clean after the shuffling feet were gone.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s all this is.
A place to store the tools for tidying.
A closet for the soul’s clutter.

The words themselves are the sin.
The root and the branch of them.
The ink on the page from Chaucer's own hand.
The sound they make in an empty room.
I hold them in my mouth like river stones.
Smooth and profane and sacred.
How does one ask for absolution from a library?

Is this a tribunal of mercy, as Borromeo wrote?
Or just an old cabinet where the dust settles?
Am I unburdening a soul?
Or just rearranging the furniture in a dark room?
The silence on the other side of this screen…
It weighs more than any answer.

The candle has gone out now.
Just the dripping.
And the scent of old wood.
Bless me, Father, for I…