Photo:Terrell Dickey
Collected Poems 8
Abbey of Gethsemani
It rose like no other spire
From off the Kentucky landscape
For eager eyes to catch
Scanning the land from all angles
For that slender structure
Rising up from where God resides
With the silent men.
Deeming it useless
They dismounted it,
Left it lying in a field
Stretched out full-length,
A hollow refuge
For caring wrens.
Since then pilgrims
Have had to grope their way unaided
Along their unmapped course
Without that beacon's guidance
To draw them to that source.
Charles L. Cingolani Copyright © 2006
Abbey of Gethsemani
It rose like no other spire
From off the Kentucky landscape
For eager eyes to catch
Scanning the land from all angles
For that slender structure
Rising up from where God resides
With the silent men.
Deeming it useless
They dismounted it,
Left it lying in a field
Stretched out full-length,
A hollow refuge
For caring wrens.
Since then pilgrims
Have had to grope their way unaided
Along their unmapped course
Without that beacon's guidance
To draw them to that source.
Charles L. Cingolani Copyright © 2006
from Merton's Journal. April 20, 1966 . . .
"I can hear the demolishers shouting from the top of the steeple. They are
now stripping it. A momentous change: the steeple has been so much a sign
of the place -- the thing one looks for when one is getting close -- the
expression of the abbey's idenitity -- a sign that it is there! I was disquieted
by the steeple's going."
"I can hear the demolishers shouting from the top of the steeple. They are
now stripping it. A momentous change: the steeple has been so much a sign
of the place -- the thing one looks for when one is getting close -- the
expression of the abbey's idenitity -- a sign that it is there! I was disquieted
by the steeple's going."
