Donatrices

My face — a Madonna of the Quattrocento —
appeared to you in a dream; within it
there was the tremor of ancient walls
and the golden, egg-like light,
as though across time something within us
had been joined —
something never revealed to us, yet something
that cannot be erased,
over which neither time nor century holds power,
something that answers like an echo
and can no longer be called back.