Many are working to scrape Chartres’ high windows
of their scalelike soot.
It’s hard to match, in this dimness, the pictures
I’ve held in my mind with what they are
pictures of. Hard to see
under its glass case, this veil —
some bone-colored, disintegrating sheerness.
Once, it saved this city. Once, with armored invaders
closing in — someone uncased
it — the real
veil under which the Virgin
gave hot birth —
carried it to the high wall of the city to wave
its milky shapeliness
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