Notre-Dame’s telling us something.
How the orioles weep.
Something in our soul is burning.
Those alchemical flames the flesh
Of our mother is devouring.
Turbulence in the streets;
Rotating anger in the air.
Division across the waters;
Swans of peace live in fear.
Above, the earth dwindles
As mercury consumes the teeth
Of the young and chemicals
Plough the guts of children
Before seeds of death are planted.
No prayers anywhere.
Angels fall like tears;
Winding stairs lead nowhere.
And in Europe the bells are ringing
A dark angelus for faith gone
Underground. A dark mass of unbelief
Stalks the stables and the high tables.
Notre-Dame’s telling us something
About the wisdom beyond grief.
We fight over cabbages while
Our spirit perishes in open view.
In alchemy it’s when things burn
That they’re made true and new.
Orioles are weeping
For the dwindling of our souls
And the smallness of the goals
That obscure cathedrals
And good laws and progress
We’ve made from wars
To civil liberties, from the comfort
Of our parish minds to the generosity
Of our linked hands.
O the orioles are weeping
For the wars that will be fought
Because of the simple things not taught
Like the underlying unity
And our fundamental trinity
And how when the way is lost
Good things perish
And we will never know the cost.
But Notre-Dame is telling us something
In its flames and its fallen spire.
We’ve been sinking lower,
Been mesmerised by lies,
Destroying truth,
Instead of rising higher.
Everything that wrenches our hearts
Like signs written in the sky
With invisible hands
Is an inscription to our times
We should read with wise eyes.
Our souls are parched,
Our hearts grow cold.
The young are climate-crisis fighting
Or are in quiet despair perishing
While on the island empire-nostalgia
Secretly and not so secretly obsesses the old.
Our politics keep looking back
To something that never was or has gone
Rather than facing the present
Like the dawn’s nightingale song
Or the dew we all lack.
Notre-Dame is saying something
About the holes into which we’re falling
Seeking power seeking power
Losing meaning falling tower.
The spire touching the sky
Inclined our eyes up high,
Led us upward to our best selves.
Maybe in these fallen times
While dim bells across Europe chime
That broken spire will re-unite our hearts
Beyond the greed of our diverging ways
Back to pilgrim roads, singing days.
They are singing Ave Marias
Outside flaming Notre-Dame.
And across the world we perhaps
Remember how fine we can be
In the symphony of our deeds
And the harmony of our needs.
For whether it be the Buddhas
Of Bamiyan or Grenfell’s grey cladding
Or that home of alchemy and grace
In Paris burning, it’s us who burn too,
And the loss is the unborn child’s,
The beggar in Timbuktu.
All culture’s shared
Beneath the realm
Of sleep and of awakening.
Notre Dame is thundering something.
Awake, O man, awake.
Awake, woman, awake.
The flames are spreading in our sleep.
Flames of the earth.
Flames of future.
Sky-flames
Arctic-flames.
Truth-flames.
Orioles are weeping.
Bells are ringing.
Why are you still sleeping?