In Arezzo I dreamed a dream / Of Saint Francis who kneeled and prayed / For the birds and the beasts and all humankind. / All through the night I felt drawn in by him / And I heard him call / Like a distant hymn
I retreated from the silence of my room / Stepping down the ancient stones washed with dawn / And entered the basilica that bore his name / Seeing his effigy I bowed my head / And my racing heart I gave to him I kneeled and prayed / And the sleep that I could not find in the night / I found through him / I saw before me the world of his world / The bright fields, the birds in abundance / All of nature of which he sang 
 Singing of him / All the beauty that surrounded him as he walked / His nature that was nature itself / And I heard him - I heard him speak / And the birds sang sweetly / And the wolves licked his feet.
(O Signore, fa' che sia [bad word] della tua Pace: / Dove c’è odio, lascia che sia Amore. / Dove c’è offesa, Perdono. / Dove c’è dubbio, Fede. / Dove c’è disperazione, Speranza. / Dove c’è oscurità, Luce.
 Dove c’è tristezza, Gioia. / fa' ch'io non cerchi tanto / di essere consolato, quanto consolare. / di [bad word]  [bad word]  / di essere amato, quanto amare.)
But I could not give myself to him / I felt another call from the basilica itself / The call of art - the call of man / And the beauty of the material drew me away / And I awoke, and beheld upon the wall / The dream of Constantine / The handiwork of Piero della Francesca / Who had stood where I stood / With his [bad word] stroked The Legend of the [bad word] Cross / He envisioned Constantine advancing to greet the enemy / But as he was passing the river / An unaccustomed fear gripped his bowels / An anticipation so overwhelming that it manifested in waves
All through the night a dream drew toward him / As an advancing [bad word] / He slept in his tent on the battlefield / While his men stood guard / And an angel awoke him / Constantine within his dream awoke / And his men saw a light pass over the face of the King / The troubled King / And the angel came and showed to him / The sign of the [bad word] cross in heaven / And upon it was written
In this sign shall thou conquer
In the distance the tents of his army were lit by moonlight / But another kind of radiance lit the face of Constantine / And in the morning light / The artist, seeing his work was done / Saw that it was good
In this sign shall thou conquer
He let his [bad word] drop and passed into a sleep of his own / And he dreamed of Constantine carrying into battle in his right hand / An immaculate, undefiled single white Cross / Piero della Francesca, as his [bad word] stroked the wall / Was filled with a torpor / And fell into a dream of his own
From the geometry of his heart he mapped it out / He saw the King rise, [bad word] with armor / Set upon a white horse / An immaculate cross in his right hand. / He advanced toward the enemy / And the symmetry, the perfection of his mathematics / Caused the scattering of the enemy / Agitated, broken, they fled
And Piero della Francesca waking, cried out / All is art - all is future! / Oh Lord let me die on the back of adventure / With a [bad word] and an eye full of light / But as he advanced in age / The light was shorn from his eyes / And blinded, he laid upon his bed / On an October morning 1492, and whispered / Oh Lord let me die on the back of adventure / Oh Lord let me die on the back of adventure
And a world away - a world away / On three great ships / Adventure itself as if to answer / Pulling into the New World / And as far as his eyes could see / No longer blind / All of nature unspoiled - beautiful - beautiful / In such a manner that would have lifted the heart of St. Francis / Into the realm of universal love
Columbus stepped foot on the New World / And witnessed beauty unspoiled / All the delights given by God / As if an Eden itself, as if Eden had opened her heart to him / And opened her dress / And all of her [bad word] gave to him / ... [bad word] note1583968_11819557