Sport 29: Spring 2002
Golgotha
Golgotha
I went out, early morning
in Jerusalem, to buy laundry powder,
and the Old City was so pretty
in waking that I kept walking
down the old stone streets
smoothed as if by water somehow
in a city where it rarely rains.
The tourist shops had long opened
when I came to a church
in a courtyard of stacked crosses—
life-sized but slim, some with caster wheels
which suggested a convention of Christs,
or the last stop for the tour groups
who took turns to carry them
and be videoed on the Via Dolorosa.
I tested the weight of a cross,
then stepped into the nave
and saw the face of a wild man,
black-bearded, oblivious, swinging
a censer and singing in Russian, and radiant
retired Americans with name tags,
humble in prayer in the high space
where the languages offered
rose and rang in the air.
I could have cried:
for the history of this ecstasy,
and the three ridiculous sunbeams
page 145
smoked with incense
climbing from the floor
to a skylight in the vaulted roof.