TOO CONCERNED WITH SELF.

A YOUTH AND A MONK IN 1968

People are too concerned
with self, said Father Higgs.
His aged face as if hewn from
Rock, sat before you on broad

shoulders, the lips labouring
with the words.  Too much
worried how self will feel,
how self will benefit. He

hunched forward, his large
eyes moving over you like
tired slugs. The symbol of
the cross, he said with a

movement of his head, is to
cut through the I, the sign
of the self. You noticed one
high brow, grey, larger than

the other, hair in nose like
insects in hiding. He breathed
out deeply. Self denial is
the essence of the message

of Christ, he said, a left
inclination of his head, his
teeth (not his own) large
and discoloured. You wanted

to ask questions, but he raised
a hand. The word I is stated
too often in conversations,
he said, or self too much

brought in as myself or herself
or himself or such as may be
used in talk. You understood
this was his way of lecturing.

His black monastic habit was
stained about the neck by food
or dribble or dried up phlegm.
We ought to be concerned with

others, he stated, wheezing, face
reddening, eyes enlarging. Where
is my inhaler? he wheezed, I really
must be off, this smoker’s cough,

my poor old lungs, must get myself
a stronger inhaler and he was off,
out of the common room he had
caught you in some hour back.

All you saw was his hand and inhaler
and departing monastic habit of black.