Michele Stepto
Rouen, 30 May 1431
A church of one
as attractive to god’s
attention as a steeple
to lightning burning
with furor
from the top down
oh doomed one
bring us to thought
as you go up in flame
higher and higher
and the ash floats free
of the eddying heat
and drifts now sideways
now back and forth in its
falling
an unending flourish
and sorrowful scripture
of all we have burned
Michele Stepto (with her son Gabriel) is the translator of Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World (Beacon Press, 1997), from the original Spanish by Catalina de Erauso. Her work has appeared in Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, Mirror Dance, Lacuna Journal, and One Sentence Poems.
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