Ghost Hands

Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna

Your hands brush marble, feel impelled
  To touch where crisp cold tesserae
   Compose a fine array

Of arches that once held
  A gallery of courtiers with gifts they gave
A throne in mosaic palace down a long cool nave.
  Now strung between the arches like a tapestry
  Hang folds that robbed Theoderic of his majesty.

Yes, it was curtains for him and his court,
  Walls cleansed of every sign
That Arian’s heresy was taught
  Here. Now the floating drapery seems to swell
   Like jaunty washing on a line
Where once the line of courtiers spanned arcades,
  Except where three white columns tell
   The legacy that history deceives
Below the capstones of acanthus leaves
That crown the columns where the accolades
  Were laid. His palace, set above, still stands
   Mosaic, but the shape his person made
    A formless mass, betrayed
By history, but for those three trunkless hands
  Once joyful, welcoming, now sadly raised
   In permanent farewell to what the Trinity erased.