A nave
and its ghosts
bear
witness to explosions
of
light and heat and fire
fire
swept down the street
as
sparks mutated into flames
dancing
cross rooftops
consuming
the place
Chaucer
knows, leaving
charred
wood splinters, ash
and
smoke, and later
a sky
shell hollowed out
what
Sir Christopher wrought,
leaving
only a stone fabric
monument
to the dogs of war,
until
moved piecemeal
to
enclose a place for Light.
Photographs: St. Mary’s Aldermanbury, a
medieval church destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, rebuilt by Sir
Chrisopher Wren, destroyed by German bombs in 1941 during the Great Blitz, left
as a testament until 1961, and moved to Fulton, Mo. in 1961, where it was
restored near the building where Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain”
speech in 1946. Today it sits atop the National Churchill Museum (and a fine
museum it is). Nearby is “Breakthrough,” a sculpture constructed from blocks of
the Berlin Wall by Edwina Sandys, Churchill’s granddaughter.
