I stand too
close.
The stones
are all confusion.
Only the
direction -- up, always up -- seems certain.
Narrowed
saints leer. Gargoyles crouch.
This
blackened rock,
crusted with
the centuries' sooted mantle --
should it
fall,
would that
the very earth should open,
provide a
Roman burial.
Twin towers
scratch the sky,
declare
their convex power:
How many
times have they laughed down at us,
mere dots,
small lives
insufficient to contain
this giant
thing?
My eye roves
from tower to tower,
faith-wrapped
battlements tumble
across the
huge face,
and inward I
see
clamor of
centuries
great press
of years
time
stretched and squeezed
labors long
and deaths quick.
Rich men
there were, and powerful, and always are,
to make such
things
to bend
lesser wills to such toil;
while women,
eyes ever on
the earth
marked
details --
raising
young, tending hurts, keeping fires --
for some who
might not return.
ii
As I stand,
hearing afar
the tap of hammer on stone
the groaning
of mighty ropes
the prayers
echoing through the unfinished shell
the present
intrudes:
the
ubiquitous immediate noise
swirling
about the great feet:
street
musicianed, roller-skating throng
(passing
sidewalk artists
whose
chalked Madonnas await the next rain
to drive the
bright colors into the dust),
some
indifferent
some playing
the lottery,
gaining a
slice of heaven for a chance at a new car,
some
standing, piercing the present fog,
hearing the
beast's great breath.
iii
Ten thousand
years ago
tribes
watched the fickle sun,
scored
progress on cave walls;
while on
this hill
a late
spring breeze
caressed
nodding flowers
chased
butterflies through long grass
spilled the
lewd perfume.
iv
Maybe the
flowers still nod, inside,
pressed
under mosaic tile
(these
Madonnas will not scare).
Here, people
speak softly, tread carefully,
know that
clerestories trap all echoes,
hold them
forever.
The dead
penetrate this place
and there
are eyes in the vaults,
and spirits
caper across the bony roof.
Gold and
steel and stone and glass:
the German
core built this
thing that
imprisons it.
v
Near the
door,
bobbing on
pained feet
an old
red-robed priest
shyly
confronts the throng,
while tied
round his neck
a box marked
"Für der Dom"
teases the
occasional coin
from pious
and guilty.
Each day he
performs this tiny miracle
and gains
his seat amid wise counsels.
vi
Halfway up
the southern spire
three
hundred feet above the plain
a huge bell
hangs.
Twelve tons,
they say:
the ropes
groaned indeed to haul this up,
here to
hunch in shadow
a mammoth
shape
prodded to
action ever and anon
sending its
immense boom across the spaces
until an
unseen day
when the
changing of the land
will hurl it
down
a final
clang
to fracture
the fracturing earth.
vii
Down the
bloody Rhine the bombers screamed
streaking
past the hunkered beast
sighting by
its immensity
hurling
their bright fire into the burning city
and winging
north.
Sometimes
bombs would find its granite feet,
explode
about its shoulders.
These it
ignored:
Not by these
stings will the land convulse:
not by might
of arms will the beast be buried.
viii
Brick fields
surround the great old church
and from
their very edges
I look
across the stone expanse
and glimpse
the thing at last,
contain its
unfinished immensity.
For an
instant only:
the years
intrude, the stones tumble,
and suddenly
all else vanishes --
shops,
musicians, vendors, brick, all --
for an
instant the Dom stands
brightly on
its hill
while all
about, here and to great distances
grass waves
flowers bob
butterflies
dance
and the
river rushes on.
Now farther
the Dom recedes,
farther and
farther, small and bright,
to the
vanishing point.
A blink, and
all returns:
the great
grey shape swims forward through the mist,
defines
itself against the raucous crowd
hardens its
lines with smell of blutwurst
flatulence
of beer:
the pulsing
tumult of its stewardship.
ix
Across the
ocean, in my home
I
pause: I see it now:
This is what
it is:
Earlier
today,
crunching
through autumn fields,
smelling
summer's faded dusty riot
I felt it
first
(as sunlight
blazed brittle cornstalks
as pumpkins
brightened in the rows):
tiny spires
scratched my thought
and all
returned:
the priest,
the bell, the crowds, the noise,
the giant
hunkered gargoyled creature thrusting from the earth;
and tearing
from the earth, it rose
and rising,
ever rising, met the sun
and all
blazed down and scored my eyes
with painful
joyous brilliance
as the
fields danced in the darkening breeze
and mice
gathered seeds for the winter night.
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