Torcello Cathedral
On the massive grey stone shutters (by stone rings
Hinged to the Roman windows of the church walls)
Are scars that might be some wedged archaic script –
Brooding on these, we conjure a day of trouble
When a mudflat, where grass grows amid brackish fens,
Grew from the mist, a blurred hope, barely risen
From the grey, tideless sleep of the lagoon.
For them though, a clear space, between fear and the sea:
For – the last walls of their larger fortress, Empire,
Fallen to Northern barbarians, to the Lombards –
They had fled to sea: to build their hopes on sand.
There from the crude substance of memories and images
And marble salvaged from the waste that was once their home,
They hewed a temple, draining the land around it:
Sowed crops there, bred beasts, drew fish from the sea.
And raised a high tower reaching above the mist,
Bell-tower and watch-tower, over the sea’s languor:
And marine-dull chimes from the bell that called to prayer
Would call to safety women children and cattle
Into the fortress of their sanctity.
Then doors were barred and the slabs rolled over the windows
To bear their silent witness to Eastern arrows,
And the men went out to confront their older adversary:
Not purgers of decadence – the indifferent offspring
Of history, whose molten rush is cast in words –
But immemorial, grey ghost-marauders
That broke on the shore, grey spume of the ancient sea.