I. The Art of Illumination

At times it is a good life, with the evening sun
gilding the abbey tower, the brook’s cold waters

sliding past and every hour in my Book
a blank page, vellum pumice-stoned

to chalky lustres which my inks suffuse:
saffron and sandarach and dragon’s blood,

azure and verdigris. Monsters and every type of beast
curl round the words. Each man here has a past,

and each man reasons for his faith. I wronged
a woman once and nothing I did after could atone

or throw a light upon the blackness of that deed,
whose harm lay in the telling, not the doing.[

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