At Chartres

It's more than a place to shelter from the rainWhile listening to a sermon about forgiveness.No need of a grand building of stone for that,Of fluted pillars rising more than a hundred feetTo a vaulted ceiling. No need of windowsThat instead of providing a view of the townAnd the farms beyond, the barns and orchards,Display in colored glass the faces of saints and angels.Here is a church that offers its congregationNot merely talk of the New JerusalemBut an actual portal or anteroom.Here is a chance for believers to feelSomething akin to the awe that's waitingOnce they pass through to the other side.

But if there's no gate that the church can open,No Jerusalem beyond the gate, only oblivion,Does that mean a cathedral has to be visitedAs a castle nobody lives in now is visitedBy students of life in the Middle Ages?Does it mean it should be repurposedAs an abandoned mill might be repurposedFor affordable housing, or for a clinicOr a civic center? Wouldn't that be boorish,Like using a painting as a piece of canvasTo patch a chair with, like usingA marble statue as a coat rack?

So what's the alternative that requiresNo alterations, that welcomes the solemn feelingsSummoned by this cavernous, vaulted space?Can I imagine a congregation of urban plannersFrom around the world filling the pews On weekends to muse on the possibilityOf building the New Jerusalem on earth,An earth made green again, as Blake imagines?Can I see Chartres as the headquarters of a practicalPilot program for asking what featuresWould any design for a city want to includeSo would-be residents could live in harmony?

Even if I assume that each participantWill be filled with the awe that ChartresOften induces, free for the momentOf the pride that insists on domineering,It's hard for me to believe that their joyOf fellowship in a single enterpriseWill succeed in bridging their differences,However sincere their attempts at compromise.

Still, if they need a miracle then to keep talking,It needn't be a grand one. A small one might do.One of the planners might claim to hear the wallsOf the church speaking to him directly,Assuring him that long ago their design,Like the design before him now,Was only a sketch on paper,Subject to last-minute changes and long delays,To the gloom of builders who worriedAbout workers to come, how they might lose interestIn the work of their forebears and drift away.

And then another planner may claim that the wallsHave prophesied to her in a dreamThat however late in the day the laborersIn the vineyard of the New JerusalemTake up their task, they won't be too lateTo contribute something before they passThe task along to whoever's waiting,Thankful the project has no end.