Noli Me Tangere: San Marco, Florence

Outside this cell the sparrows repeat
their seasonal songs.
Here a fresco to teach the soul
the same lesson over and over.

I come often. I think
of the monk who, each morning, faced
the grief of reaching out for what is always
just out of reach.

Just the other side
of Mary's outstretched hands,
Christ's trailing hand serenely denies.
His lightened body leaves no footprints

in the grass. For too many years
I have seen your hands laid at your sides,
your face which left me nothing
I could say.

In this cell, I see the monk’s breath
following him as he walks.
I see how Mary keeps
entering the solitudes of grief,

her hands filling with memory
as one by one by one
those last perfect words drift beyond
her understanding.


--Robert Cording, (1949- ), American poet and teacher, from A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems