THE CHURCHES OF FRANCE

For Czeslaw Milosz

The churches of France, more welcoming than its inns and its poems,
Standing in vines like great clusters of grapes, or meekly, on hilltops,
Or drowned in valleys, on the floor of a green sea, in a dry
    landscape,
Abandoned buildings, deserted barns
Of gray stone, among gray houses, within gray villages,
But inside pink or white or painted by the sun coming through
    stained glass.
Little Romanesque shrines with stocky frames, like craftsmen shaped
    by their labor,
Pascal's invisible church, sewn into canvas,
And slim cathedrals like herons above the cities, seen clearly from
    the highway, the loveliest is in Chartres,
Where stone stifles desire.
The mills of the Cistercians, turning water in Sunday streams, and
   their ponds,
Synagogues, elder sisters, betrayed and plundered so often, discreet,
The ruined abbey in Normandy, where among the raspberry
    bushes a black adder basks in the heat,
A small tree, growing on the roof of a village church, a young ash
    that will become a monk,
The basilica in Vezelay, belonging to Magdalene, pink as a wild
    strawberry's mouth.
Claudel's church, thickset, almost neckless, inspired, sometimes
    full of spite
And the church in Tournus, whose arches must make the Arabs
    proud too,
The moss-covered walls of modest chapels that have forgotten
    their names
And the fortified basilica in Albi, a masterwork of military art,
    sheathed in a dragon's skin,
And in the square the peddlers of nuts, holy pictures, and aniseed
    cakes.
But at night the peddlers vanish and only walls and windows,
    blind as kittens, remain,
And the vast night and much silence and sometimes a dying
    comet's roar.
Romanesque columns in cloisters, as if carved by brilliant children.
Meadows, where lovers meet.
The stone Jeremiah in Moissac, with a kind face.
The church of Maurice, who learned my language and lives in
    Warsaw among the poorest.
The churches of France, dark vessels, where the shy flame of a
    mighty light wanders.

Adam Zagajewski