Into this gilded space, my only son,
        we wander on most Saturdays, to light
a votive candle for this one or that one
        you will never know, and to admire the granite

columns great labor once brought to the Nile
        across the desert, a distance of sixty
miles, pleasing Roman eyes with their dense sparkle
        of star-shot night, their depth of galaxy,

especially after rain, being swagged with red
        wandering garlands of fire through pepper-and-salt,
worlds behind worlds, and throughout something livid.
        The legend goes that Heracles nursed at

the breast so hard milk spurted in an arc
        into the Milky Way; but over time,
it seems myth always hardens into work.
        A.D.118, and a transport team

sent, on papyrus, this correspondence:
        an urgent request for supplies of barley;
a fifty-foot shaft weighing ninety tons
        stalled in the cursing sands of Jebel Fatireh.

No other word. And now their pagan strength
        supports an arduous glistening of old
mosaics in a Christian arch of triumph,
        scenes from the Virgin’s life, a life not made

In fear and pleasure as your life has been.
        My prayer, given the vanity of all
the work this world has so abounded in,
        is that the necessary and beautiful

should draw your soul, unbaptized and still bright,
        through its exhaustion: as, through one whole day,
oil in this place, in a miraculous fount,
        ran with a clear and modest fluency.