Shells of Exile

Then were the wanderers with sea shells for a symbol

led by conquest, feared by the conquerors,

leading the conquered to a strange new way...

Lonely and praying they built and carved old stone

where the god of earthquake threw it,

forever separate and alone

in their cassock beads and tonsure

they had nothing to remember for a home,

no thoughts except of sea-like shells of ocean

they were cast up on beaches of the world.

Shells then they carved, so like themselves

all hollow vessels holding no memory

but the waste of wandering,

fluted shells (like hands that cut

the hard resistance of earth-fossiled things)

to cleave the 'rolling mountains of the sea;

perfect shells to guard the lintel, bless the altar arch:

they made a symbol of their emptiness

chiseled where feet have worn the corridors of exile,

where hands recorded only things sea-thrown

‚on shores of the world, vessels emptied of forgotten dreams

to hold a barren heaven hardly won.