I’ve been reading a lot of Thomas Merton lately, and came across his poem “Elegy for the Monastery Barn.” I guess I was attracted to the fire event, so recent in our own experience. It’s an early poem for Merton, reflecting a certain sang-froid, seeing the barn as a vain woman adorning herself for 50 years only to perish. “Who knew her solitude?/who heard the peace downstairs/while flames ran whispering among the rafters?” And the last line is strange: ” … the brilliant walls are holy/In their first-last hour’s joy.” Perhaps the liberation of death and the consciousness of that moment is a first yet last hour’s joy. I am immediately reminded not of burning barns but of Hindu cremation. But the poem is a human projection, after all, on a poor, inanimate object, contrived but useful, and therefore deserving of pity. Just as, perhaps, we are poor, animate objects, contrived by God but useful to him, and therefore deserving pity…