Poem
Maxine Beneba Clarke
Liber Pauperum
on the western façade
the archangel michael
grand wings aloft,
was weighing souls
and the serpent hissed down
at eve, regal
and adam
as thomas the apostle
put a hand
to his brow
and ash wind dusted
the upturned faces
as bystanders wide-eyed
the hellfire blaze
the cathedral spire
skeleton, blackened
a falling splendour
of gothic past days
and smoulder plumed
like anger, woken:
like a strength immortal
emerged from the tomb
and oh, the screams of the people
atheistic,
and praying
and the spectacle smarted
the eyes of the world
oh, notre dame
oh, liber pauperum:
the carved poor people’s book
of illiterate stone
and the smoke, it rose spiral
like sacrament incense:
a purging,
like the faithful,
ascending above
eight short days
before easter sunday
when the skies of paris,
ochre-scarlet, lit up
but perhaps the house burned
like no second coming;
like cult of reason,
not latin rite
like falling empire
and the sins of the clergy
and the power of the people
révolution française
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 20, 2019 as "Liber Pauperum".
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