Decline is this blue dusk
sharp around the steeple
and a belltower’s edge,
in which street lamps glow orange
and shoes clatter on cobblestones.
A person or two stops
to speak of what they know
while hurrying past, and I listen
to their words pry the weight of darkness.
Wholly anonymous,
I watch light sink into stones.
I watch alleys, baroque facades,
shop fronts and fountains all slide
toward decay, and I grip them with sight
—this medieval church, for example,
its chiseled, elaborate face.
Inside, I find shadows draped
in chapels and on marble tombs
but I wander until the lines
of the paintings and sculptures fade
so much I see the way out
alone. There’s a little more light
outdoors, and I think of the church
left behind overspread with shadow
as I and the others leave,
of its hard and silent altar.
We restore the things we need
in mind; restore and preserve
with vision, or with fresh thought,
in passing only, the icons
established, not quite our own,
thus witnessed, and slightly altered,
as we walk through the holy city
(just as we move through a poem),
choosing what to let dim, what grace
with a transient inner light.