under the construction

I know my heart still stands, beautiful, somewhere beneath all the scaffolding.

Bits of stucco have fallen away.
Dust from the demolition
of a previous pillar, a toppled era,
whisps about the edges of echoes
haunting the once hallowed halls.
Vines shot up the walls with
silent claws in the wake of bombs.
Scaling them like lizards,
lounging in the heat of evaporating urine
that trickled down the leg of a shell-shocked survivor
trembling in the rubble.

Somehow against the will of time
this sanctuary still stands
once erected to protect senators and priests
as they fingered raw gold coins, women,
feared marbled gods,
guzzled and garbled rare wine,
rich meats and figs. grapes.

There were years of monks and calligraphy,
mice scuttling around hymns raised, leatherbound souls,
nesting in scrolls, the fallen folds.

Then scaffolding resurrected its chiarascuro’d Christ,
the mottled peach flesh of wellfed infants,
architectural linen.
Here the softest pink clouds ever painted
drift across the ancient vaulted expanse
while ships assailed new shores and
the human race effaced itself
in mired visions of Eden.
New concepts of colour being sculpted
out of brush strokes and cheek bone structures.

Tomorrow a thousand feet will tread through,
37 gum wrappers will be dropped,
three will escape the janitorial effort.
Indiscriminate index fingers will capture simulacra
in digital titillation. Feigned smiles and mock gang signs
looming in the foreground. Minds wandering forward
into menus, linguine al funghi, espresso.



But now the great chamber lies empty, listless.
A creak escapes the rusty joints of a ladder long unhinged.
The sound ricochets down the ancient hall
disturbing a tremor of memory from the inertia of stone
The still air awakens for a moment –
electrons gasp.

Someone who has spent hours burried
in basement stacks at the University library,
or perhaps just plagued by intuition,
climbs the ladder.

The arms outstretched,
weilding brush and palate,
stage this new battle
against our inevitable
destruction.