It is exterior, what can be seen, touched, not just what adjoins the pure mind. Trappist buildings, granite-stoned, black and stern-grey, in the midst of bramble and trees. Belonging to this place, sanctuary, for however long the body will last.
It is the maze of outbuildings: one marble-slabbed for white Oka cheese; one filled with barrels of apples rosy as Our Lady’s stiff plaster lips. One building to hide washtubs and lye. Hives. Barns. And near the barns, coops for the chicken and eggs. Sheds where tapers hang their long fingers to dry. A gazebo not far from the lake.
It is the massive main building itself, which shelters pantries with shelves of gooseberry jams and mustards made from wild mushrooms. Benches and sills, halls, dormitories, single cells. A chapel lined with white pine. A refectory with seats for two hundred. Banks of cook stoves. Ceilings, heaven-high to heighten the quiet. Rooms for visits and rooms for prayer. A sewing room to repair torn wool. A room for the dead and for the families to story the dead.
It is summer heat, the lake to the south hugging sloped laps of shrubs, its loping length floating with monarchs and blackbirds with red-feathered wings. The rest, inconsequential, nothing of import on the shore far across. The thin sky there reflects only want.