Indecent, self-soiled, bilious
reek of turnip and toadstool
decay, dribbling the black oil
of wilted succulents, the brown
fester of rotting orchids,
in plain view, that stain
of stinkhorn down your front,
that leaking roil of bracket
fungi down your back, you
purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed
smolder of refuse, fathering
fumes and boils and powdery
mildews, enduring the constant
interruption of sink-mire
flatulence, contagious
with ear wax, corn smut,
blister rust, backwash
and graveyard debris, rich
with manure bog and dry-rot
harboring not only egg-addled
garbage and wrinkled lip
of orange-peel mold but also
the clotted breath of overripe
radish and burnt leek, bearing
every dank, malodorous rut
and scarp, all sulphur fissures
and fetid hillside seepages, old,
old, dependable, engendering
forever the stench and stretch
and warm seeth of inevitable
putrefaction, nobody
loves you as I do.

She can never remember how she entered--
What door, what invisible gate, what mistaken
Passage. But in this place every day,
The day shines as a muted mosaic of impenetrable
Colors, and during the black moonless nights,
Every flickering star lifts smoke, drips wax.
She flies, back and forth through the nave, small,
Bewildered among the forest of branchless trees,
Their straight stone trunks disappearing majestically
Into the high arches of the seasonless stone sky.
No weather here, except the predictable weather
Of chant and procession; no storm, except the storm
Of the watchdogs let loose inside at night.

Now when she perches on the bishop's throne
Her song naturally imitates the pattern
Of frills and flutes found in the carvings there,
The hanging fruit, profuse foliage, ripened
Curves. Her trills have adapted themselves
To fit perfectly the detailed abundance
Of that wooden Paradise.

And she has come to believe in gods, swerving close
To the brightness of the apse, attempting to match
Her spread wings, her attitude, to that of the shining
Dove caught there in poised flight above the Ark.
Near the window of the upper chapel, she imagines
She is that other bird, emanating golden rays
To the Christ in the river below.

Resting on a colonnade opposite the south wall
Of stained glass, she watches how the lines
Of her wings become scarlet and purple
With Mary's Grief. And when she flies the entire
Length of the side aisles, she passes
Through the brown-orange swath of light
From the Journey into Egypt, the green and azure
Of the Miracle of the Five Thousand Fed.
Occasionally she finds that particular moment
And place where she is magnificently transformed,
The dull brown of her breast becoming violet
And magenta with the Adoration of the Magi.

What is that happens to her body, to bone
And feather and eye, when, on some dark evenings,
She actually sees herself covered, bathed, suffused
In the red blood of the Crucifixion?

Among the statues at night, she finds it a peace,
A serenity, to pause, to murmur in sleep
Next to the ear of a saint, to waken
Nested on the outstretched hand
Of the Savior's unchanging blessing.

Certainly she dreams often of escape, of reversing
That process by which she came to be here, leaving
As an ordinary emissary carrying her own story,
Sacred news from the reality of artifice,
Out into the brilliant white mystery
Of the truthful world.