d nurske's The Copyists

We duplicate the Word.
We begin at lauds, first watch,
black sky, Polaris receding:
torch-flame bows, rights itself,
and fixes us in the scriptorium:
each monk at his hinged desk,
sinister panel for the doctrine,
dexter for the blank page.

With a pumice shard
we abrade the text
to the correct resistance—
vellum of stillborn calves
that will take ink
as an incision, not a stain.

The novices settle
to nib-carving and ruling lines.
Their tongues stick out
in that absurd concentration
that will enchant them
and lead them to hubris.

We veterans begin inscribing
with one eye on the window-slit—
we glimpse the Levant, Flora,
Philomel returning
shyly to the forest,
Brutus hauling his great load,
Jean-Luc and Paquette
slipping hand in hand
into the lilac bushes.

In the corner of the eye
we watch great armies muster and decamp,
bonfires, stakes, gibbets,
the Inquisitor's wheel.

At last we catch ourselves
gazing rapt at our hands
as if we were nowhere,
absent from this world like God,

and it is then we draw
a bud, a bird's deft flight,
a noose, an old man
hunched in a torn cloak,
eyes dim with longing,
writing desperately, safe
in the narrow margin of the law.