At Chartres

It’s more than a place to shelter from the rain

While listening to a sermon about forgiveness.

No need of a grand building of stone for that,

Of fluted pillars rising more than a hundred feet

To a vaulted ceiling. No need of windows

That instead of providing a view of the town

And the farms beyond, the barns and orchards,

Display in colored glass the faces of saints and angels.

Here is a church that offers its congregation

Not merely talk of the New Jerusalem

But an actual portal or anteroom.

Here is a chance for believers to feel

Something akin to the awe that’s waiting

Once they pass through to the other side.

But if there’s no gate that the church can open,

No Jerusalem beyond the gate, only oblivion,

Does that mean a cathedral has to be visited

As a castle nobody lives in now is visited

By students of life in the Middle Ages?

Does it mean its purpose should be reconceived

As an abandoned mill might be reconceived

To serve as affordable housing or as a clinic

Or a civic center? Wouldn’t that be boorish,

Like using a painting as a piece of canvas

To patch a chair with, like using

A marble statue as a coatrack?

So what’s the alternative that requires

No alterations, that welcomes the solemn feelings

Summoned by this cavernous vaulted space?

Can I imagine a congregation of urban planners

From around the world filling the pews

On weekends to muse on the possibility

Of building the New Jerusalem on earth,

An earth made green again, as Blake imagines?

Can I see Chartres as the headquarters of a practical

Pilot program for asking what features

Would any design for a city want to include

So would-be residents could live in harmony?

Even if I assume that each participant

Will be filled with the awe that Chartres

Often induces, free for the moment

Of the pride that insists on domineering,

It’s hard for me to believe that their joy

Of fellowship in a single enterprise

Will succeed in bridging their differences,

However sincere their attempts at compromise.

Still, if they need a miracle to keep talking,

It needn’t be a grand one. A small one might do.

One of the planners might claim to hear the walls

Of the church speaking to him directly,

Assuring him that long ago their design,

Like the design being debated now,

Was only a sketch on paper,

Subject to last-minute changes and long delays

That caused the masons and carpenters

Who’d said they were ready to start at once

To begin to lose interest and drift away.

And then another planner may claim that the walls

Have prophesied to her in a dream

That however late in the day the laborers

In the New Jerusalem take up their tasks,

They won’t be too late to contribute something

Before passing the task along

To those who are waiting to move it forward,

Glad that the project has no end.