His ghost sits on the tombstone in the
churchyard,
the
one tilted like a crooked tooth full of decay.
He
believes his trips to the river three hundred years ago,
his
plodding steps to the river fifty yards away,
were
miles and miles tread in vain, in obscurity.
For
thirty years he carried water in wooden pails
to
the great scaffolding of wood and holy bones,
his
humble contribution to the cathedral’s cartilage,
to
the cement mortar so that polished beatific blocks
of
gray stone from the quarry could rise to the heaven
painted
in yellow noonday heat or the blue matin rain.
His
joints ached and sang psalms of penitential pain.
Today,
tour buses glide along the boulevard,
the
cumulus cloud above stitched by the contrails of a jet.
Sunbeams
carom from stained glass to the pale eyes above the grave.
His
face, his signature, is everywhere reflected from the great walls,
and
he knows now that he was an artist, not a slave.
The
ghost ascends, cleansed and joyous and saved.
~William Hammett
Site Map
No comments:
Post a Comment