What Else Could a Cathedral Be

Monet’s Rouen facades,
Thirty blast furnaces
Pictured by the Bechers,

The first obsessively
Remaking the one scene
Somehow to evoke it

Or whatever it was
He felt there was to make,
Discovery being,

As it always has been,
Creation and capture,
The second just taking

Black and white impressions
Of thirty different scenes
Scattered in five countries

All of blast furnaces,
Any discoveries
As similarities

Neatly framed, side by side.
Even without color
Or the texture of oils,

The blast furnaces look
A bit like cathedrals,
Which makes Monet’s Rouens,

Assembled together
In reproductions, seem
A bit like prediction.