April 21, 2019Notre Dame de Paris Catches Fire
And everybody becomes a poet, seeing
meaning where there is no meaning,
seeing metaphor in the destruction
of metaphor. A house of God on fire
is a poem. Listen: it is saying nothing
stands forever, nothing you love will
not be burned away. Good Friday
has come again, and somewhere men
nail themselves to wood to feel like God.
Somewhere a man sets fire to a girl.
A crucifixion is a poem, saying nothing
dies forever. Even a woman who burns
will rise again. Notre Dame will rise again,
says a man on a Paris street, and he
is crying. Paris is not the same without
her. A man crying on the street is a poem
saying nothing feels like holiness, the fire
that burns away everything but what is
good. What is good? This day, a man
coming down from his cross, a girl
walking forth from a fire, raising again
her voice to sing the good news.
from Poets Respond