Beauty Itself Is Burning Down: To Notre Dame

BEAUTY ITSELF IS BURNING DOWN: TO NOTRE DAME

beauty itself is burning down
a newsman cried
with Notre Dame lit like a torch

against the sunset sky
what can we say
from faraway

will the rose windows melt inside
I wondered, can it be so many saints have died
and now their images too their agonies renewed

for another contract, lease

is the name for Paris, rue,
not rosemary, please forget me
what I knew or thought I knew of

Hugo, I thought randomly

cathedrals burning in a green april
april, the cruelest
does the world skip a beat in an afternoon

of eight centuries
the world within the world

we never see
not being visionary

the cathedral erupting into great roses
in a penultimate Spring
the cathedral a great green candle

consumed for the Lord

as if by example, we should be shorn
of our somnombulance
in the lily of this hour

with the traffic no longer surging, transfixed

in the rose of its crumbling
singing, singing singing
the bell into the tower

the tower withstanding

the bell in the tower
the bell in the tower
beyond all wars and scars

the little mockeries in peace time

and yet, crowds grew
and thronged the singeing avenues
willing the walls to stay

for hours and hours
the spire of Notre Dame
our lady's arrow-sorrow

lit in a golden flame, flickered, floated sideways
what next? The flaking, flinging down of stars. the moon falls into the earth, a mirror no longer

ashes for beauty?

time itself collapsed in a deep black hole

remnants of a single spring twilight
our souls in the rubble still singing.
will not cease, will not leave it this way

on this, no calendar's day.

mary angela douglas 15 april 2019