The Museum at Cluny

The Museum at Cluny

It was hot and bright in Paris that day.
We took the metro to Odeon and walked to Cluny.

Behind some partly excavated roman baths
was a gothic building turned museum

blessedly cool, and dark, no line, toilets.
You hardly cared what you saw.

A lot of alabaster saints. Gold reliquaries
shaped like the Virgin, holding Jesus.

A narwhal’s horn, like a jousting spear.
Blue incense boats and tiny cast iron cooking toys.

Five tapestries of a lady and a unicorn,
the unicorn unexpectedly small-headed

with a long horn (like a narwhal)
and a beard, grinning.

The lady sometimes sad, standing next
to a miniature orange tree.

Lapis and gold, going by not faster but slower,
as though you yourself are falling

into the middle ages, when everything impractical
was for God except perhaps a single pair

of earrings.

And back again into tumult and city, looking
for  ice cream near the Luxembourg Gardens.

-- Amy Isikoff Newell,  ~ 2012