Vox Populi
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Barbara Crooker: Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris
April 15, 2019
Thus it is said:
The path into the light seems dark
Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching
.
Linked with the rest of the world as we are
via satellite and internet, I watched in horror
as the roof of Notre Dame and its filigreed spire
went up in flames. Nearly fifty years ago,
in the wreckage of my first marriage, I lit
a tall white taper, prayed that my husband
would return to himself, keep our family intact,
a prayer that disappeared in the dark vaults,
the deep shadows. Twenty years later, I returned,
recklessly in love with Paris and my new husband
in equal measure. We climbed to the roof, 387
stone steps, where the city spread out before us,
Hemingway’s moveable feast. We kissed
each other hard, up there with the crouching
chimeras, strixes, the gargoyle waterspouts,
the flying buttresses, thinking that this time,
maybe we got it right, that this marriage
was built on solid rock, would last, forgetting
that nothing lasts, not the bronze bells, not
the glitter of the rose windows, not our little
lives, getting closer to the end. But even though
we know that restoration will take more than
our lifetime, and that we will not climb those
stairs again, in the vault of our memories
we are kissing. We are kissing as though
our lives depend on it; we are holding
each other tightly; we will never let go.
Poem from Slow Wreckage by Barbara Crooker (Grayson, 2024). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.
Barbara Crooker is the author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry. Her many awards include the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature.
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Barbara Crooker can’t write anything but superb poems. This one is an example. I love how she uses relationships and the destruction of Nortre Dame to illustrate both the impermance and enduring qualities of what we love.
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So kind of you to say this, Charlie! Many thanks!
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I was just telling a student whose marriage had ended that she would live to love again. This poem is a testament to that rebirth. Also, I just read that Notre Dame will be reopening soon. Talk about rebirth.
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Very cool. Love and art…
>
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And I’m going there next week; we hope to get to see her, at least from the outside. . . . Thanks for the kind words.
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Wonderful.
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Thanks, Donna!
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The Tao Te Ching quote is prescient too.
B. Crooker’s poem tells me: go up the stairs into the fires of passion and love, not the conflagrations of destruction.
Barbara: May your hope bring us hope. May your love bring us love.
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I just love how you quoted Springsteen! Thanks so much!
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Margo said it perfectly — a powerful, fiery poem…
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Un grand merci, Laure-Anne!
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avec admiration, et le plus grand plaisir, chère Barbara !
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“…forgetting / that nothing lasts,” Yes, that’s a difficult one to accept. Many of my prayers that “disappeared in the dark vaults, / the deep shadows.” went up in flames with the fire. I hope they are written in the eternal energies – whatever and wherever that may be.
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Many thanks, Rosemary!
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Un grand merci, Margo!
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Poignant, dark, beautiful in its darkness, and for our present…prescient!
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