My Father Has a Vision

A cathedral rose
In a pint of yogurt
You were spooning.

Look! You cried. Look!
I raced in from the other room, fearing
You’d fallen. Look, you cried,

What’s it doing there?
And, truly, father
A gray stone spire

Probed the air
Draped in white silk
Above the eight-ounce cup

Supported by flying buttresses
A rose window, snarling
Gargoyles spouting fire.

It wasn’t the morphine.
You weren’t dying of pain. You saw
What you saw.

And the pigeons exploded
Into the room and roosted
Above your bed.

Askold Melnyczuk’s poetry and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of Massachusets Boston and is the publisher of Arrowsmith Press

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