Cathedral

Five hundred Catholic eyes stare down from the arts and crafts plastic piece panes; Łódź in eighty window paintings drawn and each worshipper a tetris cube mentally rearranged by God; four or maybe five hundred miles away there are nuns in the same sort of pews in staid British chapels stripped of gilt by Luther, Mad Kings and propriety. Last night we drank vodka shots; shisha widening the opening, a bulge in space-time, like looking up at stained glass - we were catholic there, unbounded like the bepenguined Poles who sit dumb in the presence of their Lord. I sit in pews pew-brown, lined up to bowl down - I didn't cross myself, but just walked felt the pagan strength of stone, yielded. "Przepraszam, Przepraszam, Przepraszam", I move through benches like through buses; awkwardly, for Poland, where the hugs kisses shots flow freely and I don't. "Ja nie rozumiem Popolsku" - but the bus conductor was my friend and the ticket lady, and Mihao who brought milk on a bicycle, they I could understand. But here in you, Cathedral, I speak stone - the blunt grey flanking me in flinty fortitude; I understand them, Cathedral, but I will never understand you. Przepraszam = Excuse me Ja nie rozumiem Popolsku = I don't speak Polish