Seven Hundred Septembers
(Idle musings on the facade of Seville Cathedral)
How patiently they suffer, these old saints!
Their sandstone features, crumbled, vague,
some noses gone (some medieval ague,
or Time's cruel drip?) they offer no complaints.
Stranded seven centuries on this reef,
they bake, and wait resignedly, begowned,
for bell-tower shade slowly to inch around.
Do bas-reliefs experience relief?
This church was once a mosque. In point of fact,
the holy ancient venerable Gothic pile
(and here one struggles to suppress a smile)
has relatively recently been sacked,
and only lately put to Christian use.
These saintly faces, preternaturally mild -
do they still fret? Or are they reconciled
to slow decay, as hand or ear works loose?
And do they savour time as you or I,
observing how, below them in the street,
perukes give way to pony-tails and pleats?
Or do, for them, Septembers flicker by
like squandered seconds? Do they muse on Fate
and Destiny? What if my youth has gone?
What if this woman keeps me hanging on?
They also serve who only stand and wait.
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