“Cologne Cathedral” by Vassar Miller (poem)

I came upon it stretched against the starlight,
a black lace
of stone. What need to enter and kneel down?
It said my prayers for me,

lifted in a sculptured moment of imploring
God in granite,
rock knees rooted in depths where all men
ferment their dreams in secret. 

Teach marble prayers to us who know no longer
what to pray,
like the dumb worship’s lovely gesture carven 
from midnight’s sweated dews.

This poem was originally published in Onions and Roses (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968) and is compiled in If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems of Vassar Miller (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1991). Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Vassar Miller (1924–1998) was a poet and creative writing instructor from Houston who lived with cerebral palsy. Over a literary career that spanned almost forty years, she published ten volumes of poetry, of which Wage War on Silence (1960) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and she was twice named poet laureate of Texas. Her poems explore religious faith, social isolation, and physical disability. When asked to describe the meaning of her life, she said, “To write. And to serve God.”