Stones

It has been said that stone is gentle,
sweet to the hands of the architect,
as true as it is beautiful,
an almost intellectual substance,
to which a vine or rosebush can adhere with trust.

In Canada the stones are very thick,
stone for the houses as well as the convents,
insulation from the predatory cold,
foundation of a word to last forever.

Wood is for New England wood begins at Burlington,
trees are destructible, quick to be burnt,
and once burnt they are dead,
good and evil together,
rotten trunk and flowering branch.

But in the stone the good and evil linger,
Pierre de Craon acquired leprosy
from the passion preserved in the stone
that he handled as if it were woman,
and in the stone he carved the leperess
whom it had killed and yet retained
to greater immortality.

In France the gargoyles and the saints are stone,
distorted faces and ecstatic ones,
in Canada the stones have been reshaped,
the good and evil of the Middle Ages
and of the times between and afterwards
captured and transported in the night.

Even to risk the taint of leprosy
is better than to glorify a tree.
Wood is the stuff of the cross,
but stone is the tomb that burst open
to change all sorrow into certitude,
to cure the leper and to drain the sea.