Poem of William Hermanns

                            Chartres

How long they dragged my stones
and washed the hand of slavery with their sweat.
They built pillar upon pillar
and piled bones beneath.

How long they set one altar after another
and knelt in the muskiness of relics;
their heaving and sighing
drew moss on my walls.

Now you step out from the row of centuries
and light a candle.
You think it is I whom you behold with your sighs of Ave,
that it is I who sits there in the high window,

at dawn bedecked with gold,
at noon glistening white
to fade with evening purple.
But I'm not the Christian glory, created by the handiwork of man;

I have never been this.
Man has forgotten, forgotten with zeal,
that I am the handiwork of God:
a Jewess who bore his son.

                  William Hermanns        [P103]