An English Nazareth
(In 1061, Lady Richeldis of Walsingham, in a series of visions,
received instructions to build a replica of Christ's home)
We— who have only our strength to sell
and so little here to be thankful for—
we know well she has never risen
from that embroidered footstool
where she embroiders her mornings.
Yet she has stood in His simple home,
she says, the woodshavings obvious
on the clay floor, the cramp, the cool.
And because she has power over us
to manufacture walls out of English
ground, to her specifications
(though she insists, not hers at all;
she's only a witness to the original),
because of this her dream has weight.
Here, a slant of evening sun, the saw
still warm in the red-grained wood.
Here, the hammer's shout on the nail
each time bursting and then dying off
as she passes a door out of Palestine.
In an ecstasy, at least three times—
though not moving one tailor's inch
off that embroidered footstool
where we imagine her long fingers
fumbling over the detail in her lap—
we picture her there, tall and swaying
richly through Christ's small house.
And no matter how vivid her dream,
local men build as we have always built:
English wood upon English earth.
The best we deliver is a mockery,
a cacked version of our own poor homes
(those shambles she's never visited)
yet this is the one she will have us deck
with flowers, have us light, keep warm,
proof from rain, since this is the roof
under which she expects to dwell
long in grace, in that other real place.
While we— who have only ourselves to sell—
give praise to God for the gift of work.
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