FROM AN AMBULATORY.

You can lay it down
          but it won't stay fixed,
nail it to the church door
          and some upstart pope
          will remove or revoke it.

Late afternoon light
          pours, we say, through
the cloister-windows
          and washes, we also say,
          the millenia-old stone floor.

Light does none of that –
          the pouring, the washing –
by its own properties
          but through the innocent licence
          of a vision given tongue.

In such breezy corridors
          spirit takes flesh
on the expository tour:
          a guide is as good as
          a god – for the short walk.