On Hearing The Holy Land’s Oldest Pipe Organ Play After Centuries of Silence

CBC/Radio-Canada
September 8, 2025

So much can happen in 800 years:

An earthquake can level
Lisbon’s churches. So, too, can crack their foundation,
which Voltaire had rejected.

Darwin can load his doubts as cargo,
depart on the HMS Beagle,
return with notebooks and fossils,
remnants of religion,
that he’ll lose with the death
of his daughter.

My friend can leave seminary,
marry a nonbeliever,
divorce himself from the Church,
wail in private at the loss.

If not for an ancient tone,
I, too, would’ve left years ago.
How such a lovely sound
can come from bronze cradled
by bloodied hands
of those who thought themselves instruments
of God, I don’t understand.

I’ll never understand.
And yet, I can’t give it up—
this gift to the ear and soul, wielded once
by the Crusaders,
their chorus Deus vult.