Commonweal Centennial

"Ceasing to attend to the inner theater and looking instead at the Christian story of death would place Christians where they belong: in the open before their God."

"Oval Park’s cherry trees / sleeved with white blossoms, / the moon’s eclipse, a lunar / rainbow, wild crocuses, / azaleas, lilacs"

"The day is done. / She is poured out like water / but still, in bed, talks her daughter / down on the telephone"

"I think / geometry is the secret—the cut at the heart / of the canvas, the heart of the room, the heart of— /what we can’t say."

Readers take issue with a recent essay on women's ordination and praise the crackle of David Jones's poetry.

"This one’s courtly love, / the beautiful bow to beauty set above / all others, the de rigeur frustration of / desire, his pining even for her glove"

They were the grandfathers that Germans my age shuddered over in dread. What had Opa done during the war?