After returning to King’s College Chapel
The night-locked dusk clicked shut.
The cool air rose like a stone.
At last, my voices echoed through the high,
miraculous chamber. And the iconography
cut me, breathless
symmetry.
This kingdom
is fraught with the skeptical—
the stem before the gold-bloomed leaf
whose color
the cathedral imitates.
The dusky grove. The dragon and
the greyhound, caught in their infinite chase
through the shaded vaults—
Someday, we will join them
when we, too, rise
and begin to glow like the lion glowed—
I am mad with desire. For what? Today, I collapsed at the endless hem
of His great robes—
at the foot of the altar, beneath the Great East Window—
and prayed, but could only find myself repeating
Let me do better, Let me be with You, Let me do better by You,
and Will everything be okay—
When I left, I saw those sallow panels of the West Window, finally,
for their dim bone-whiteness,
and, like a jewel hanging from a linden tree,
an angel descended
from above the highest mullions
and, one by one, kissed my many eyes.
