303 - Notre Dame De Chartres

Notre Dame De Chartres

By Gail White


My eyes went back and forth all day
between the two unequal towers,
as altered shades of blue and gray
passed over their opposing powers.


While Notre Dame de Belle Verriere
(Our Lady of the Lovely Window)
sat in the blue unclouded air
red cherubs swung their censers into.


The faith that built these glowing aisles
claimed all the workmanship and wages
of folk who never knew their trials
made up a thing called Middle Ages.


What if they're now a vanished dream?
They left a credo, simply stated-
Beauty alone can make it seem
that love and wealth are overrated.


Gail White is the Poetry Editor of The Piedmont Literary Review. Her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, The Christian Century, and Southern Poetry Review. Two previous poems appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY (Jan. and April, 1990). She is the author of two books of poems, Irreverent Parables (1978) and, with Barbara Loots, Sibyl and Spinx (1989).