Chansons de geste.(Brief Article)(Poem)

 
Chansons de geste 
 
   1 
   Crossing at last the border from piety 
   to the arts, this outgrown parish church 
   traverses myth, to myth of a kind. 
   Foursquare. Puritan white walls. High 
   clerestory windows still streaming clear white light. 
   Built for rural worship, the gallery-space, that was nave, 
   could just as well serve as stable, 
   walls and floor spattered with honest dung; 
   the once-choir-loft, now art's high altar, 
   hold sweet, warm-scent hay. Yet 
   impossible to bridge: this day to seasons 
   of a whole god, of homespun and harvest. 
 
   2 
   It happens in a second--the eye 
   drawn past Heysen, Olsen, Rees, 
   to a transparency of blue …