Hush
The nuns of Puebla were disbanded
One hundred fifty years ago
In Mexico
The dark Reform of Juarez came,
O General, you put the nuns away
In private life to pray or not to pray
No convents, nor in clericals
Would Bishops or their priests be dressed,
Nor would as Father be addressed
So were the sister nuns dispersed,
The convent emptied and the prayers
Of all of them dissolved in air
The building empty yet not so,
For in behind the walls they go
Not seen again
Until the century to come,
And how were they so hidden
When all nuns and all religious were forbidden?
Behind the panels that revolved,
In rooms beside the empty rooms
For living nuns, not catacombs
Behind the mirrors on the walls,
Through strict tunnels and beneath, behind
The frescoes, altars, out of mind
Beneath the prie dieu a trap door
Down which a visitor could slide
Where forty, fifty nuns could hide
All they needed furnished them
By faithful neighbors, there they stayed
For more than seventy decades
And if inspectors ever came
They never saw, they never found
This convent underground
But in the thirties they emerged,
The nuns of Puebla had survived,
Their order and their faith alive
And if that faith should be outlawed
Again, again there will be those
Who bide their time until disclosed
They will be welcomed at the end
Of some dark era of despair,
But hush, do not say when or where
Pavel
September 20, 2011
