then broke in and found nothing.

She took me by the hand. A desolate place,

a place of stones, being unmade and made:

dark gashes in the earth with, all about,

stagnant pools, so churned up the terrain;

and standing alone, a stark new office-block,

half-built and bare, its concrete white in the moon.

From destruction we may draw consolation:

that there’s no escape from fate,

not for great works or even holy places.

Nevertheless, that so ravishing a building,

its materials alone – marble and cedarwood –

so sumptuous, the stone so smoothly cut

so closely joined

                             Think of that

and, thinking of the place, how deep inside, there

in the Holy of Holies,

you can lose what you are,

desire to, fear to

                            As I Flavius,

a soldier of fortune, not myself a Roman,

in this epoch since the fall,

trafficked with a lithe avatar of the goddess

Astarte, Aphrodite, whatever name,

in the region of King’s Cross.

She it was

who led me through that place to the tall block

as yet unfinished, so that it seemed a ruin

the sanctum, the broken chancel, the lopped shaft

holier than it would have been

intact