The wind’s a terror, the light outside
too bright to feel but doom, and here stone
columns rise to carved dome ceilings that don’t fall
for no reason I know and let down light
in pillars of dust from who knows where.
An old woman in a black shawl kneels
under Christ sagging on the cross, his kelly
green skirt covers his suffering flesh and high
an angel statue looks like a Roman soldier.
Peace is easy in all this space—or if not,
good manners might hide my carnivorous
heart. The old woman lifts her gray
head and moving lips to the tortured Christ,
the prick, I think, surprising myself, his life
and death a Hollywood tragedy: He dies, but no—
he’s back! And like a good gangster
lives in the biggest house and keeps
his mouth shut. Of course he resisted
in the desert, he already knew he was bound
for glory. The story confounds lives
languishing unnoticed except by death
or invention, how to lose—or win—for no reason,
how to suffer without fantastic dreams, or hang
bleeding from a cross, or grow old alone.
The woman noses as-yet unresurrected
flowers at God’s feet as a young one slides in close
to me, all flesh and breath to say her prayers. I glut
my sorrow on the rose of her skin, deep
and black as night, until she slips off the pew
onto her knees. A place makes us know everything
or think we do so we come to new a place
to know we don’t. Two Japanese women tiptoe past,
pause, turn like deer. And I—at the curve
of their skirts—feel my heart turn bat cave,
my big puff of ambition only that. Do I want to die
with a kiss and a lie, or watching my enemy
taste my brave blood? A thief in the street, I’m here
to count my treasure, calculate this light, this tomb.
How many baptized here are buried here? How
many breaths do I have to take before I breathe
the dust of someone I once loved? Blessed
with glimpses of fairies and trolls, we’re a crowd
of apple-minded horses stomping
and shivering out of the wind. Doves
coo from the cupola, and the giant doors
behind me let in a blast of traffic and the biting whirr
of saw blades. Under trees I know, there’s shade
as deep as stone and wider than whatever it is
I’ve fallen through. The old woman presses
her face against the stone floor and my cheek
feels cold. Miracle enough. I close my eyes
as the beauty beside me rustles to stand,
her clothing opening and closing past manners
to the only prayer I know.