The Cathedral was there,
Impotent, for show, for others, for other
Ages. The spectacular up-spearing
Of its tonnage pierced us
With the shadow-gloom and weight of the sacred.
Not the first time I’d seen Rheims. The last.
I shall never go near it again.
The lightning stroke of what happened
Burnt up the silkiest, secretive, tentative
Map of France I was weaving
Ahead of us – as a spider weaves its walkway,
For our future, maybe. Our first
Exploration beyond Paris together,
Reconnoitring, note-making, enthralled
By everything. We sat in the square
Dunking our buttered croissants in hot chocolate.
You were writing postcards, concentrated.
In your mac. Midmorning, the air fresh.
The dark stub gypsy woman
Was suddenly there. Busy, business-like
As a weasel testing every crevice,
Or the blade of a waiter splitting oysters,
Flinging without a pause
The bad one into the bin, the top shell
Into the bin, then at the next, attentive,
Finding the key-hole. She was holding out
A religious pendant – a Nicholas, a Mary –
Palm upwards. Expert, without a side-glance,
Almost before she spoke you had refused her,
A practised reflex, sprung like a trap, hard
Your vehemence met her vehemence.
Her racing routine demand stopped at your ‘Non.’
And she did stop, stung, stunned, as sudden
As if you had slapped her. Like a pistol her finger
Came up to your face, all her momentum
Icicled into a pointer: ‘Vous
Crèverez bientôt.’ Her dark face
A knot of oiled leather, a quipu,
Like Geronimo’s. Bitter eyes
Of grappa-dreg revenge, old Gallic malice,
Raisins of bile. And as abruptly
She had gone on, hither, thither,
Among the tables and vanished, leaving her words
Heavier than the Cathedral,
Bigger, darker, founded far deeper –
My whole body taking their weight
Like a newer or much older religion
In me alone, to be carried
Everywhere with me – deeper catacombs,
And with a stronger God.
But you
Went on writing postcards. For days I rhymed
Talismans of power, in cynghanedd,
To neutralize her venom. I imagined
Returning to Rheims, how I would find her
And give her a coin – bribe her to call home
Her projectile. But you
Never mentioned it. Never recorded it
In your diary. And I hung in a hope
You hadn’t even heard it. Deafened, maybe,
By closer explosions. Closed, maybe,
In a solider crypt.