The guide in the flashing cap explains
The lie of the land.
The buildings of the convent, founded
Here, a good mile on the safe side of the border
Before the border was changed,
Are still partly a cloister.
This was the laundry. A mountain shadow steals
Through the room, shifts by piles of folded linen.
A radio whispers behind the wall:
Since there is nothing that speaks as clearly
As music, no other voice that says
Hold me I’m going … so faintly,
Now light scatters, a door opens, laughter breaks in,
A young girl barefoot, a man pushing her
Backwards against the hatch —
It flies up suddenly —
There lies the foundress, pale
In her funeral sheets, her face turned west
Searching for the rose-window. It shows her
What she never saw from any angle but this:
Weeds nested in the churchyard, catching the late sun,
Herself at fourteen stumbling downhill
And landing, and crouching to watch
The sly limbering of the bantam hen
Foraging between gravestones —
Help is at hand
Though out of reach:
The world not dead after all.
1989