GOD
Sitting alone on a broken wall
in the white sandblasted Provencal heat
in La Chartreuse de la Verne,
I watch a nun duck beneath
a blue-green lintel (the mottled
stone unique to this region).
Her purpose sought within
the cool dark room beyond,
I watch unnoticed. But
her long hard shadow
touches me like a black ray.
For a moment she denies me
the certainty of sunlight
and her God breathes once
within that skipped heartbeat.
And then she’s gone and
the old engine of the sun
turns the world again.
Later, in the barred
and spotted light of
ancient cloisters closed
round brilliant terraces full
of crosses scattered amongst the
olive trees, the same dispassionate
breeze shape-shifts the leaves;
it raises dust,
transfigures heat into gold.
And later yet,
seated at the border of
God’s promontory, where
the fallen masonry squares shoulders
with the prehistoric fixity of
uncut limestone, there the fume
of holy order dissipates. Where cork
and chestnut trees grow wild
across the folds and pits
and hollows of this valley;
where base physics drains
the sap and salt flies in
the Mistrale, there the snake
drops eggs , cool-white amongst
the roots and butterflies
blow like cinders; in the throat
of the lizard a pulse beats slow.
And through the distant veil
of plainsong barely heard,
the thermal voice of
original earth whispers,
wordless, unarticulated. And
within it there is nothing
of praise or supplication, no
grammar of hope, expectancy,
no syntax of desire. This is
the uninflected voice,
the broken consonants
of falling water, the endless
vowels of the wind.
