In the Byzantine room the mostBeautiful cabochon is the missing one.Clear, like the head of Brian Boru’s harp.I imagined myself drinking and drinkingFrom ewers—they had real respectFor rock crystal back then.Smears of the human on all glass,Child height, clouds of breath.Reliquary Arm of Saint Valentine,Silver, with a sapphire on one finger,Rough, uneven,And then you come around to the otherSide and see a dungeon in his forearm,Sprung open—we are free.Next to it, the reliquary of MaryMagdalene’s tooth, removed to fillSome cavity. Everywhere the prayingHands are missing from their statues,Stolen.Now turn to the Pietà With Donors.“Limestone with traces of polychromy.”Grapes fall from Christ’s open wound.A man holds his single stiffened sheetOf seaweed hair. His mother’s mouthBlackened with centuries of disbelief,Nonbelief, she didn’t believe it so hardHe came back to her. The cried-outEyes are alive, like his foreheadAt the Cloisters. The tuck in his loinclothCan be perfectly viewed,His foot only imagined. The wholeTradition, in this place, is on display.The lectern eagle with split beak,To speak. Saint John on PatmosReceives the revelation, red meatIn the mouth of the dead dragon.On either side of Christ, the donorsSmile: Pons and Armand, brothers.This had to happen, they agreed,It’s ours, and placed him in a privateChapel. There is a deep cavernInside Pons’s bent knee whereSomething, clear as cabochons,Was, used to be. The water in livingLimbs that stands us up, that kneelsUs down, that drapes us over Mary’sLap like a necklace. All around,There were unidentified stonesIn those chalices that I, unbeliever,Could easily name. And I tooWas wearing something that I—Ancient, uncorrupted,Uncovered—had made!