for Notre Dame

PACIFIC ARC

April air, so clear today.  The quiet sea-

blue sky.  Clear as that great bell

ringing in Paris – for the swell

of hearts, for Notre Dame (in her infirmity).

In Minneapolis, as everywhere, the plague

confines each to monastic cell.

For contemplation, just as well…

for dreams, these patchworks made with rag.

My own dream surfaced in a film – Deserto Rosso

(M. Antonioni).  Monica Vitti, in

moss-green – damaged angelo-mammi;

her little boy, gone lame (povero bambino)

at her ceramic studio; those indecisive men

full of morose indifference

battered by commercial arrogance,

industrial violence… & the wistful omen

of the desolate cathedral (windswept, hollow

Sant’Apollinare).  Alighieri

stood in this nave once; calmly

pondered the tall wraiths, gleaming in shadow –

Justinian, & Theodora… all the martyrs

in procession, holding their lamps

lifted, unmoving… lambs

in a moss-green meadow, by the still waters.

Just so each poet carries in their heart

like robin’s egg in oak leaf nest

a Paradise, made roughly manifest –

as Langland’s Imaginativa would impart

dream-visions of the human Temple

hidden there.  So Henry Church

would make a supreme sketch

on local limestone, an American example –

one Venn diamond, rimmed with Jonah-pen

borrowed from humble Maximus

whose subtlest partitas mass

the radiant matrix of divine & human

(union of the two-in-one, distinct

without division or confusion).

Curl, then, into this acorn

nest of light, this Rose of every precinct –

Apollinaire & Mary Magdalen   together

witness at the sepulcher

*

Grace attentive   through Hell-sulfur

Love revive   on silver loon-feather

When the local materials begin to coalesce

& the collage takes shape & form

& the design of Maximus, his dream

translates (in waves) our constitutional mess –

for that incarnate Union of the two-in-one

implies a like distinction between

Church & State – salvation

neither by Emperor nor Pope, but won

deep within each living human soul

in liberty of conscience

loving freedom of response –

so that the invisible Churnagogue is whole

& multi-confessional – universal – hidden

like Micòl’s almond canoe

in the garage, in Ferrara (you

know what I mean).  So we begin again

where we ended before – in dreams

in shadow-lands of fiction

in the feathery benediction

under that granite palm of Roger Williams

in the old town of Providence, the rose

rood of Rhode Island

with an origami flower-bend

beside the humble stream of San Francesco

flowing to sky-tinged Gulf, flowing to Sea

under a firm Pacific arc

lit by candescent sunset spark

far off there   breathing   with you & me

4.16.20