Chapel at King's College, Cambridge

I have passed under the towering arch

And the organ set with gold,

The windows stained with storied glass

And saintly robes unrolled

Over nonexistant bodies,

Imagined inside panes

And outside the chapel pillars

In a nothing space that gains

Its depth from every silken crease,

Every gloomy face, watchful eye,

Downward heads and folded hands

Of magi passing by—

And clear as day, helpless, I saw

The world beyond the stone:

Kings under semi-crowns, owners

Leashing standing hounds, known

only in the space between

The image and the truth,

That one exists to gateway bliss

And serve as living proof—

And Cromwell, helpless, just the same,

Made light of his excuse

That smashing windows in the cold

Would serve no urgent use;

The beating heart inside his head

Transformed into a lie

The middled life inside its walls

That danced outside his eyes—

And well this truth the mason kept

While carving out their poses

And gave himself a middled life,

His face among the roses,

Not made to honor every hair

That whiskered from his chin,

But to set the shape of a formless form

By hemming his robe in.

J. H. Waldvogel