Jacob Bathanti
Looking at Churches
From the window of a
metallically appointed nightclub –
Chrome-clad go-go dancers
shimmying in minimalist cages –
I can stand and watch the
rain patter-patter
On the sandstone of a
400-year old cathedral. Water
Pouring down thin streams
through iron tubes
Set like oboes,
clarinets, recorders in the mouths of gargoyles
Twisted up on the
ramparts like old men,
Rendered obsolescent with
the coming of better plumbing,
Aluminum gutters,
mechanical threshers and reapers,
Plows drawn by tractors,
foreign brand names etched across scarlet steel.
They look sadly down,
brows furrowed and more
Than furrowed by a
sculptor’s caprice: the Gothic taste
For the shivery savor of
frightful ugliness,
And watch as raindrops
pour in a coalescent stream
Conjoining with the
street; they stare across at the cathedral façade.
San Sebastian looks
impassively towards heaven,
Arrows protruding from
him with all the insistence of phalluses,
Foisted upon the virgin
young marble man.
Where floodlights have
lit up the sprawling ornamentation,
Caught the saint in his
ravished humiliation
(Awaiting the coming of
another canonized virgin for a nurse),
The rushing rain turns
golden – captured, too, for an instant, and then gone
While he waits, looking
up to heaven for some succor.
He is not praying for
rescue from the Romans,
But only imploring God
for everyone to stop gawking at him.
I avert my eyes, knock
back my whiskey sour.
Looming down from the
churchtops, the monstrous graven musicians
Swallow the endless
torrents, and cannot turn away.
Jacob Bathanti
is from Boone, North Carolina. He is a senior at Wake
Forest University, where he writes for the school paper, the Old
Gold & Black. His poems have been published in Bay
Leaves and Only Connect: The 2007 Charlotte
Writers Club Anthology. Another poem is forthcoming in the
January edition of Sojourners.