ALMAZONE
We have been walking in the rain for quite some time now
but i have decided to go up
the hill to the visit the basilica again and i'll go.
We pass old Lyon and the rivers
and on the bridges i feel like there is water everywhere,
i'm above it and under it, surrounded by it,
and through the noise of the rain i can hear
the stone steps shout and the old walls whisper
climb up and recall the promises of love you made by the river
but they're now forever dissolved in the water and never to be found again.
I remember when i uttered them on a spring afternoon;
the girl's just a memory now, a few stills in my head
since i threw away all the notes and pictures
but i can still feel our arms clutching.
I realize the change of the season on me
as it wets my clothes and soaks my socks
through the holes on the shoes she offered me for my birthday.
It's been raining for the past two days.
We get to the basilica through a bushy and muddy path up the hill,
my friend notes we have no girls with us this time...
we go up the marble steps and push the sacred door
inside, there is a big sacred mess
and the priest speaks into a microphone
to tell the visitors to get out for the mass
as if the place will stop being a stone building to become the house of God.
So we get out through the sides
and walk around all the chapels and dig the statues, the sculptures,
all the old objects, exposed in the exhibit room:
that gold has been glittering since the twelfth century
and that ivory represents the Christ in glory
and some man is fighting a snake or a dragon...
I look at the censers and the portraits of bastard cardinals,
and the representations of dead or dying saints;
I stop for a while to observe the paintings of two sacred hearts
and while a few people pray in the chapel,
I feel my very own.
I lose my friends and go back up to the mass
it's All-Saints day all the benches are full
but a man sees me and makes room, so i decide to sit.
Everybody's listening to the priest's psalms,
with their palms to the sky,
a young woman clasps her hands hard to feel the qualms
of faith
but her phone rings and she reaches in panic in her Longchamp bag
to turn it off.
I want to remind the priest that i was man-made
and that because many people died for it
or painted it
it doesn't make it true to all
but all these people standing up and sitting down at the same time
to the words like a human tide
make it holy.
The truth is covered like the Virgin Mary
and faith, whatever it is, is beautifully
hidden at the bottom of hearts
it's pure like the last pure thoughts in a lustful girl
it's a tiny spark ready to ignite
but it's raining hard outside.
I will stay a little bit more and walk around,
look beauty in the eyes and feed my soul.
