The hildesheim doors.

• Author: Rogoff, Jay
• Position: Poem - Brief Article - Poem

The Hildesheim Doors And here I'm sitting on a low stone bench, but not a bench, I see now--it's a wall, an old foundation round a grassy patch whose center, a six-pointed memorial, marks where the fringes brushed the parchment scrolls, then blessed the lips, letting glad voices sing the Flood, the flames of Sodom, chariot wheels sunk in the sea, the fleshy reveling around the Golden Calf. Half Hildesheim got flattened by the Allies in '45, plane following plane, bomb following holy bomb, mere weeks before Red tanks inspired the love- death in the bunker. In the marketplace Hildesheim's good burghers schemed to rebuild, timber by half-timber, in full Renaissance variegated splendor, the butchers' guild, a charming resurrection, and so clean you'd expect the master butcher to be Mickey, chauffeured by Goofy decked in lederhosen. But it's for real, bearing out the lucky destiny of a city that embraces its own terrible role in history. In the southern quarter a host of houses survived the bombs, their sixteenth-century frames jauntily crooked, plaster walls whitewashed spanking clean. Just one building went to rubble, this synagogue, burned down on Kristallnacht. It's easier to make a memorial of something that's no longer necessary. At Hildesheim cathedral, great bronze doors nine hundred years old spin out the twinned story of fall and redemption, of fruitful loss and bloody victory. Their style shocks...