Lynn Gilbert
Byzantine iconoclasts
of the early Christian centuries
plastered over saints’ faces
or shattered their statues
to no avail: people kept creating
images to their devotions
As futile today
for the museum guard
in Istanbul’s secularized mosque
to admonish
the devout girl moving her lips
and wiping her tears
before a small inlaid casket
said to contain a hair
from Mohammed’s beard
She knows what she needs:
a palpable thread to climb
hand over hand
to the divine
