The Small White Byzantine Chapel

1927 –

On this island nude and nearly treeless
(But for the few acacia trees in bloom
In the small white plazas of stone and sun
With their zones of salt and seaweed aroma),

On the far side, across the island rock
(And the dry wind and fresh donkey dung),
The cupola of the white chapel stares:
A stucco eyeball brightening the sky.

Inside are sparks and fumes of incense,
And candle flames before the iconostasis,
Where a slant-eyed Virgin leans in grief:
O points of mystery in the finite space!
Through the black air (within the whitewashed dome),
The priest leads the orphans in prayer and song.
O lifelong darkness of the finite vault,
And the white dome vainly searching the sky.

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Mount Sinai Hospital. My mother lay
in a good corner room with lots of sun.
The surgeon traced the steps of her death dance.
A soldier then, I’d flown in from France
where in Périgueux’s children’s ward, one day
I saw a young girl in a coma. Sun
came through glass walls; the child was beautiful,

Willis Barnstone

2015

Gospel of Clouds

On cloudy Sundays clouds are in my heart
as if my brother came, as if the rain
lingered among the mushrooms and the art
of freedom washed into the murder train
or rinsed the peat bog soldiers of the camp.¹
On cloudy Sundays clouds are with Joe Hill.
Last night I dreamt he was alive. The tramp

Willis Barnstone

2015

The Good

On the first morning of the moon, in land
under the birds of Ur, before the flood
dirties the memory of a couple banned
from apples and the fatal fire of blood,
Adam and Eve walk in the ghetto park,
circling a tree. They do not know the way
to make their bodies shiver in the spark

Willis Barnstone

2015

Poems

The Small White Byzantine Chapel

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

Poems

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The Small White Byzantine Chapel

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

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