The Burning Cathedral, by Jed Myers

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, by J. M. W. Turner (UK). 1834-35

​The Burning Cathedral 

                                     The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, J. M. W. Turner, 1834-35
                                                          Scenes from the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, CNN, April 15, 2019

Where is our Turner now? CNN 
video shows us the spire aglow
and at a tilt as the scaffolds go
up in the hell-dark heavens-high smoke,

plume, viewing it, we do not feel
will trip the carbon monoxide alarm 
on the cloud ceiling under Paradise. Where
has our Turner gone? In the microwave

broadcasts our gadgets catch, where 
is that brush’s own fiery awareness,
stroke upon stroke to call witness
alive in the air and the ash? No painter

here sketches furious studies for canvas
later, to capture that forest
fire’s cratering up through the roof, 
the burn in our eyes till we hear

the roar, the name of the beast 
beneath our medieval order. Blaze 
a beautiful terror, no Turner renders 
the old warhorse’s thorax and haunches,

mane of flame now lighting the Seine.
Our great Christian engine’s devotional 
pistons pulsing for centuries against
the Saracens, awe’s vaulted technology 

buttressed by charrings of heretics’ flesh,
smashing the lens on the shape of space--
where’s Turner and his eye to help us
face it? A sandal-shod prophet

offered his friends a soft-spoken treatise
on love, and look what men made,
grand and ornate. Where is our Turner
to paint the burning cathedral of state?

Jed Myers

​Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (winner of the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and four chapbooks, including Dark’s Channels (winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Award) and Love’s Test (winner of the Grayson Books Chapbook Competition). Recent recognitions include the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, and The Tishman Review’s Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Recent poems appear in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Jed is Poetry Editor for the journal Bracken. Find him at https://www.jedmyers.com/