Capela dos Ossos
—on a Chruch of Bones, Evora, Portugal
We pray in a church of bones
in which skulls outline graceful arches
of low vaults and whose columns are ladders
of stacked femurs. We admire its capitals
of craniums
It’s walls, unlike the idealizations
of Michelangelo, are not fantasies
romanced in fresco but the real thing:
stony remnants of once-respiring
antiquity
We pray in a church of bones
whose windows look out
beneath an osseous calcium dome
Our chapel of once-articulating skeletons
—a reliquary of calcium phosphate—
rises over a promontory like a lighthouse
warning the world of muscle and breath,
spit and sweat, bile and blood
to steer clear of the promises of ghosts
and constantly sound to avoid being
beached in mud
We pray in a church of bone
We hope in a field of dreams
We hate or love between
unknown and unknown
by Jim Culleny
Jan 1, 2010