“Hold high the cross, so I may see it through the flames.”
– St. Joan Arc, before being burned at the stake.
~
A holocaust of love
Burning boldly through the dusk
Cruciform, a candle gleams
In a city’s heart consumed
Crown of thorns enclose that heart
Bleeding fresh in Paris streets
A crimson tide run through the years
To the roll of tumbrel wheels
Here the Savior’s Body hangs
Slain anew each waking hour
Through the altar’s sacrament
Or the sting of sin and death
Christ is all in all undone
Heart melting in His chest
Like the Paschal candle’s wax
Or the glass of Notre Dame
Molten dripping, like the tears
Hot with loss, Our Lady sheds
A spire singes sky
Like a dying robber’s cry, “
Save yourself and us…
If You be of God!”
And the spire, anguished, cracks
And the world, unknowing, plummets
A pillar of cloud, a pillar of flame
Guiding, but we know not where
For how could God be smitten
In His holiest of homes?
God is dead, they shake their heads
Dead as the Man upon the tree
Lungs consumed by suffocation
Like a cathedral’s blackened shell
Could not this place of sanctuary
Claim sanctuary for herself?
Could not He who roused the slumbering
Free His pinioned arms and fly?
Mysterium Fidei, chant the saints
Who gazed among the gargoyle heads
This is the Mystery of the Faith
The bells their riddles weave:
“And what is truly monstrous
And what truly sublime?”
Is the glow that kisses night
More of Heaven than of Hell?
Is there light through the rose window
As fiery as the Son?
Is there light through the rose window
As grace-filled as the moon?
The cross of gold still standing,
Where the flames claim maiden’s flesh,
And the arms of Him expanding,
In the center of our souls?
We are people of the night
We are people of the morning
We are people of the riddle
And the hymn of Notre Dame
We will form a human chain
Like a string of rosary beads
That stretch across the ages
Salvation within reach
We will sing our last Aves
Like the nuns upon the scaffold
To share a Mother’s sorrow
Going forth to the Third Day.