Before I grasped that the undocumented
do not travel (for reentry is not allowed)
my professor lit the lecture hall with
images of Sainte-Chapelle. “The hand-
writing of the past,” she said, and now
that I am here, how I would like to hate
these gaudy signs of empire, excess
of gold, the stained-glass hieroglyphs,
no place for the eye to rest. Hate, for joy
of saying, these twenty years moored within
were not lost. But if stone and egg yolk, bonded
to blue pigment, can sell a star-filled sky,
then I too may be tempted to relish in
the might of a painted Lord.