Four hundred firefighters

Four hundred firefighters mobilize

As brooding billows o’er the structure rise.

And as the fire grew, the damage spread

As did the crowd there, looking on in dread

Or silent helplessness or disbelief.

A voice among the press, a fire chief,

Explains what all the world can now discern:

“These old cathedrals, they were built to burn.

What needs a fire but fuel and warmth and air? —

You see, the soaring beams do almost dare

Some surreptitious flicker to ignite. 

The airy openness that lets in light

And fits the form to prayer inspires the flame,

Which dances upward from the wooden frame.”

Not only firemen, but priests know well

The heart of stone is not inclined to swell

With holy rapture fired, but open hearts

And humbled knees, not turned to worldly arts

Nor arms, nor bothered by tomorrow’s care, 

Whose spirits soar and spin as light as air,

As spires that would the vault of heaven win,

And windowed walls designed so tall and thin

That they rely on buttresses to hold

Their forms erect and still or else they fold

Beneath their own uplifted body-weight —

Such souls the world is wont to immolate.

Although the blasting hose attempts to tame

And twice four hundred firefighters came,

The brilliant conflagration still proceeds,

As light itself outstrips all other speeds. 

Yet when the great refiner’s fire subsides,

The structure’s still intact; Bethel abides. 

The mattin bells tomorrow still will knell,

And Jacob limp away from Penuel.

The Bells

The bells, the ringing bells invade and they

Refuse to be ignored. And in that they

Refuse to be ignored they shake us out

Of self-pre-occupation; so they serve —

By their demanding that we stop and heed —

They serve but to recall us to the fact

That all of this does not belong to us.

Persistently, obnoxiously they ring,

And whether we would wish to hear or not,

The bells will keep insisting like the Creed

We keep repeating day and night beneath

The bells whose ringing called us there — the ones

Who there beneath the clanging bells have come

To kneel and keep insisting, “I believe...”,

To sing and keep on singing, “Glory be...”.

So bells, a keen observer said, are meant

To break upon our scrambling and say:

“All this shall pass away. Be still and know...”