Cuxa Cloisters Poem by Joseph M Donatelli

In the fourteenth century at the foot of Mount Canigou
A regal marble monestary rose square plum and true
Stone carvers chiseled whiled mallow flowers
Nativitys and animals on its hundred marble capitals
Medieval craftsman's iron chisels struck angelic grace
Ageless breath and immortality into flower leaf and face

Dedicated to St Michael and St Germaine too
Catalonia's carved catholic fortresses grew
It's thick walled vaulted librarians taughtu the ordained few
The ritual of the Latin maracle passed to a fisher crew
Now 700 years have passed these walls to a curious few

Wandering the gardens of crumbling Cuxa cloister brews
Images of the turning dried up leather leaves of books
Quill painted by shadows of monks studying in tiny nooks
And the wind smoothed stones stand still as ghosts chants echo
From the cloistered memories of rock and bones

No thoughts of mental circumstance intrude
Upon the empty high wide rooms of stone
None disturb the marble crypts where old ash thoughs lay
Conceived and spoken then forgotten for the last
Three hundred thousand days the Benedictine orders monument
Weathers to clay Day turns and night turns
And the living turn away