in the dusk, leaning towards the edge of history
on the bare, worn-smooth stone skull of a homeland.
High above, the old openings: tiny portals for the day
peepholes worn and splintered by the light that pressed its way in
for eight hundred years.
Here is the world’s secret central pillar.
Here came God’s tenant farmers.
Here they warmed themselves around a little fire of faith
while frost tore at bodies and walls: a hoarfrost-white kyrie
gently breathed out beneath the rafters and stave beams
in a provisional heaven.
Here life and death met: two sides of a thin door
worn by hands that groped across the mystery.
Life hidden in the lifeless body on the crucifix.
Death, hourglass-shaped, present in the foot of the baptismal font.
Here someone came, bearing a man’s load
of visions, spread them over walls and pillars, beasts’ jaws
angels’ wings, dragons emerging beneath knife and hand and brush:
a tendril of ochre red grey white, a short winding path
between paradise and damnation
the bottomless eyes of Jesus and the demon’s nostrils.
After three hundred thousand mornings, yet another morning
on its way through the universe.
In a cool gallery, on a pillar, beneath the brim of the roof
the face of an unknown animal dawns.
It has come here from the dreams
of one of your ancestors.
