Hugo on Harris

Banging on the locked door of St. Clement’s
and claiming he would fake faith,
if dying, for a favorable epitaph
like those on the headstones strewing the tilted churchyard,
Richard Hugo, in his poem “St. Clement’s: Harris,”
recorded the date—our third wedding anniversary.
How struck I am to see that date and remember
looking out of the unlocked church on Harris,
a brisk sunny day in late July decades later . . .