Without Beginning or End

Table of Contents

• Cover 1
• Copyright 5
• Contents 10
• Falling from High Trees 14
• I Dropped from the Sky That Morning 16
• My Father’s Topcoat 18
• Cap-Pelé Coastline at 4:30 a.m. 19
• Infusion 20
• At Dawn, I Open 21
• A Letter Slips into the Coastline 22
• Preparations 23
• Ancestral Waters 24
• Aerial Vagabonds 26
• Between Thoughts 28
• On a Swath of Land Bordered by the Northumberland Strait 29
• Vatican II Opens the Church’s Window 30
• Two Continents 31
• There Is No Why 32
• Philippe Petit as Prometheus 33
• Posthumous Visit 34
• Divine Motion, 1992 35
• Why Père Chabert Wept When He Read Baudelaire to His First-Year University Class 36
• Père Chabert and the Passion 37
• A House in Chile, a School in L’Acadie 38
• In the Background 39
• Père Chabert’s Legacy 40
• You Will Walk along the River 41
• On Canvas 42
• Enigma of the Arrival and the Afternoon 44
• The Dream of Constantine 45
• Metaphysical Composition 47
• Theseus and the Minotaur 48
• Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening 49
• Detail of the Saint Anthony Panel from the Hermit Saints Triptych, ca. 1505 50
• Icon of the Allegorical Ladder of Saint John Climacus 51
• Allegory of Immortality 52
• Drop Curtain for the Ballet Parade 54
• The City Rises 55
• Time Is a River without Banks 56
• The Tower of Babel 57
• Magdalene with Two Flames 58
• Without Beginning or End 60
• John 62
• Marie 63
• Rain in Cap-Pelé 64
• Topcoat 65
• Train to Boston 66
• Shining Knight 67
• Christmas Eve 68
• John William Becomes a Breadwinner at Fourteen 69
• The Joan Hat 70
• And for a Father Hear a Child 71
• The Pod’s Dark Seeds 72
• Goddess of Nightfall 73
• The Children Now Scattered 74
• My Grandmother Marie 75
• My Grandfather John 76
• Notes 78
• Acknowledgments 80