WTC Special Living in the Falling Apart as Gathering the Storm . . .

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First the ladder must be written: Chartres, 1942 Alexis Quinlan A scaffold like that isn't just lying around but wrought by live wiry men who breathe Gitanes and work in haste, wary of women and priests. And some fear for the facts, knowing that if an enemy, if anyone, if I wanted to take over a country, I'd first bomb its world-famous windows. Later. One or two believe, desire but can't make the climb. (An ardent heart gets you nowhere in France, too.) A few braggarts crave a tall tale for bartenders and grandsons, but are too old, or small. Only one can right the ladder tightly, orchestrate pulleys and weights, bring low the stained light blessing in though he doesn't believe in that merde. This one sees no mysticism in masons, just a job in hell's climate: grain by grain of sand blended with rust and cobalt in bathtub cauldrons over outraged flames, sheet by sheet of the slick stuff, billowy like silk in beach breeze, sliced with blazing iron, hand-painted, re-fired, careful-set into double lead (also soft from fire) and piece-by-pieced together on an indifferent Wednesday in a long gone 1233. He mates twenty-six iron claws to 900-year-old lead. A dozen bleary priests below, heads flung back, maws wide as if to suck a tit, as if to pray the true cross home. As he frees the glass beast from its nest, a northern gust lifts damp locks and he glimpses the sea of golden brown pews beneath, and the moon- shaded marble that rises to a froth all around, and the flying buttresses arced like his Sabine in pleasure toward massive vaults above, vaults freakishly immense like—must be like— the reason they come here. He shrugs: (he thinks he sees what a cathedral is for). Good work changes everything. ~ . ~