The hildesheim doors. (Poem).

The Hildesheim Doors

   And here I'm sitting on a low stone bench,
   but not a bench, I see now--it's a wall,
   an old foundation round a grassy patch
   whose center, a six-pointed memorial,

   marks where the fringes brushed the parchment
   scrolls,
   then blessed the lips, letting glad voices sing
   the Flood, the flames of Sodom, chariot wheels
   sunk in the sea, the fleshy reveling

   around the Golden Calf. Half Hildesheim
   got flattened by the Allies in '45,
   plane following plane, bomb following holy bomb,
   mere weeks before Red tanks inspired the love-

   death in the bunker. In the marketplace
   Hildesheim's good burghers schemed to rebuild,
   timber by half-timber, in full Renaissance
   variegated splendor, the butchers' guild,

   a charming resurrection, and so clean
   you'd expect the master butcher to be Mickey,
   chauffeured by Goofy decked in lederhosen.
   But it's for real, bearing out the lucky

   destiny of a city that embraces
   its own terrible role in history.
   In the southern quarter a host of houses
   survived the bombs, their sixteenth-century

   frames jauntily crooked, plaster walls whitewashed
   spanking clean. Just one building went to rubble,
   this synagogue, burned down on Kristallnacht.
   It's easier to make a memorial

   of something that's no longer necessary.
   At Hildesheim cathedral, great bronze doors
   nine hundred years old spin out the twinned story
   of fall and redemption, of fruitful loss

   and bloody victory. Their style shocks us.
   It's frighteningly modern: Adam and Eve
   fling spindly limbs over their nakedness
   beneath the blasted prehistoric tree,

   their fingers pointing everywhere to stain
   anyone by themselves. They know. That serpent
   curling among the flowers like a vine
   has lost his voice and can't plead innocent.

   Their round mouths wail in cartoon disbelief
   at the rough justice of their sentence, numbered
   from Day One. Moony heads smooth as if newshaved,
   plucked out for shunting down a ramp, they're
   tumbled

   toward death--for stealing fruit! sun-ripe and warm;
   we bear helpless witness. Smiling in wait,
   wearing his dark suit like a uniform,
   the sexton flips a switch. The lights black out

   and brother kills brother under an eclipse
   worthy of a crucifixion. No angel's
   words to Mary, burning through space from lips
   to virgin ear, can light these bronze rectangles

   chock-full of God's love, each comic strip panel
   a boxcar coupled on a one-way track
   to terminal, screaming right on schedule,
   rectangle after rectangle in the dark.

Jay Rogoff is the author of "Cutoff" (Word Works, 1995) and "First Hand" (Mica Press, 1997). His new book, "How We Came to Stand on That Shore, "is forthcoming (River City). He teaches in the liberal studies program at Skidmore College.