Iconostasis, edit 2: Caleb, Mark, Joseph, Matt, Achebe

[Caleb Murdock]

BASILICA

Piety turns
the heart to stone. // I'm taking this to be a general statement about feelings and piety (which I understand), and that you're not talking about a specific person.

Let me cover this rock
in gold leaf, in the delicate
browns of flesh, in flecks
of black and rich azure -- // Covering the gray stone is symbolic, of course, given that the stone is already a symbol for a person's hardened feelings.  But I don't understand the symbolism.  Why do you want to put a pretty face on someone else's hard-heartedness?  Or is it, somehow, your own hard-heartedness?
let it not remain gray,
empty, almost modern, // Not sure how "modern" fits in, although it's interesting.

ultimately the kinder home to moss // Not sure which is the kinder home to moss, the bare stone or the decorated stone?
which knows only compromise. // You've lost me with the compromising moss.

It's pretty obvious that the symbolism in this poem has great meaning to you, but any reader/listener who doesn't share your symbolism will have trouble understanding it -- unless it has an obvious meaning that I've missed.

As long as we're on the subject of piety, I completely agree with your initial statement in the poem. Pious people are often very hard-hearted. My best friend from childhood, who had a naturally loving nature, became an evangelical minister, and his world philosophy is about as hard-hearted as it comes. He believes that his own parents went to hell because they were non-believers, and he believes that I'm headed there too.