The Language School

In the basement,
beneath what was the chapel
in the old cloister, before
God reorganized the nuns
into city dwellers, I found
a manuscript of impossible
visions, recorded by an angel
or girl, in what looked
like blood, but was perhaps
the thickening of ink
in my own arteries.
The language
was one of sighs.  I held
the book out and listened
to the distillation of traffic
outside, the background
voices of energy hitting
pistons, turning wheels
in thin songs.
Up above, on a chalkboard
in one of the many rooms
without windows, I mapped out
the nouns and verbs
of the interaction of angels
with humans, and found
no sign sufficient for
the past exchange.
But the place was empty
and I was alone.
What was spoken there
on the many floors of
the old monastery, was
a language I didn’t know,
which had fastened itself
to the darkness and silence,
waiting to break open
on the altar stone.