Watching the swifts storm St. Catherine’s Church,its lofty walls raised of brick and white stone—an unfinished basilica, earthquakesand fires beset it, the transeptand tower were never built—I thought:the swifts in their mad, haphazard, grandattack on the Gothic structure and in their whistles,shrill and coarse, utterly un-human,competing with cell ringtonesand singing blackbirds, giving their final concert,are the image of ecstasy, but not ecstasy itself,they can’t be, they don’t want to be—they aren’t John of the Cross or Catherine of Alexandriaor Catherine of Siena, they know neither fullness nor void,doubt and pursuit, despair and rapture.These swifts are of the species Apus apus,they resemble swallows but shareno kinship, they’re unableto navigate on land, they know only one thing—flight,only the endless soaring overheadthat demands a spectator both slightly soberand a little touched, they need…
