The Millennial Pedestrian

Two Views of Chartres — November ‘75

1.
Door within a door, it opens into darkness.
The organist lifts his fingers from the keys,
his closing chord engulfs us and we step inside.
Departing worshipers ignore us,
gawking tourists trying to see the space
we’ve come so far to see; our eyes are not
accustomed to the Gothic twilight of the nave.
The stained glass barely glimmers on this late November day.

Long before the Romans came, this place was sacred.
Dwellers in the dark green forest clearings
knew the force of an enormous will flowed from this ground
or down to Earth here.
And now we trace its old trajectories up and down
these sculpted columns. They slowly rotate as we near
the sanctuary, apexing in darkness far above us
that is firmament, not gloom.
Giddy with the spinning dance of vaulted space,
the censered air, flickering banks of votive lights,
shuffling paces of the pilgrims with their Psalters
and Michelins, murmurs from the multilingual docents,
we exit through a transept door into a dreary
Sunday afternoon that now seems full of glory.

2.
To enter Henri IV, a restaurant with splendid views
of Notre Dame, we must climb well-trodden steps
into a hushed and reverential space. The dining room
is full of formal families eating gigot and poulet fermiere,
the generations joined at table in their Sunday best.
A beacon of intention far too old and long for them to fathom
is passing through them, passing through bright glasses of the
Chateauneuf-du-Pape, passing from the ground beneath them
to the heavy sky. They hold the wine up to the light,
taste it and pronounce it good, shush their children,
banter with the waiter who has served them since the War.

Quietly, we dine. Though this is not our church, we share
in its communion. Through its windows we can see
low clouds, Notre-Dame itself, musicians from a military band
below us on the square.
They smoke and turn their collars up and watch their instruments
disappear into a bus. Soon they will also disappear
and we will walk down to the Gare SNCF
and disappear ourselves into the dim unwritten history of this place.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006.
It's part of the Old Poems category.
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