Dereliction I

Brick russet as dead foxes,

torn walls and empty boxes.

Paraplegic doors ineptly

Grasp at squalid confidence.

 

Slate grey, dirty hands,

broken hopes and lying charms.

Slippery they jaunt insanely

Thrust like frigid countenance.

 

Dreams who, barely grew,

now their withered dying fruit.

Childlike hand delightedly

Clasped in pallid expectance.

 

Ends behind, dimly dark

caress him kiss him, sharks.

What wildest eye immensely

Observes a rigid common sense?

 

Down behind, god and cash,

little hopes burn, they smash.

Never remembered openly:

The bright new screams of dissonance.

 

The motivation of Derelection I came as I walked past an abandoned old school building, left behind in a desire for modernisation, newness.  The many lost memories that belong to a place, the dangers of forgetfulness, of being too practical (in this case defined as ‘common sense’), of what present joys can be lost in the effort to gain a future perfection, were at the forefront of my mind.

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Industrial Morning

Crowded ways and

empty valleys.

Contained in space and

concrete chalets;

in urban sprawl.

 

Cross chains, silver

tubes and chimneys.

Contagion steps on

iron walkways;

to dimly crawl.

 

White sky walks and

grey men tarry.

Sighs and signs;

to vivid talk.

 

Lost in massive air,

the raining windows.

Leaping clouds in

blue sky vessel, sun

Indwelling.

Lurching.

Burning.

Paschalion A

In the ashen mist

we have gone out.

In the dampness

of a restless day

that shudders into life.

 

Amidst the dew

and dimness

of the morning light,

that skirts, that curtsies,

to our beleaguered sight,

the rising sun precludes

all that is dim

and that which hears not glory

falters, fails and fades upon the eye.

 

That dew,

that soft, damp,

odour of silent waiting

is all burned up

and joins again

its own intended stay.

 

The stone

which before the

door of night

secured the death

of him whose brightness

death cannot contend,

is moved away,

thrown,

rolled,

and stirred up;

and cast up

in glorious revelry.

Light,

bright radiance

of the unconquered Sun,

comes forth.

He night dispels and

in his brightness all

that is gives way:

by of itself becoming,

like to like,

which in its likeness to

the Light of All

grows ever more itself

as ever all

turns from radiant thing

to radiance Himself.

 

Morning has come and

with light brimming,

overshadowed with it,

we run to seek Peter.

To the Beloved I

My beloved has gone

down to his garden,

in light

in splendour.

The blooms of

roses

raise their heads

to him.

The crowns

of their joy

red as blood,

as the blood

he sheds

once for all.

Easter Morning at a Village Church

The yellow plate of the sun

is hidden behind clouds.

A misty, hilly, morning; ghosts of memory lie

in valleys, on hedgerows.

Dew falls in blue grass.

 

The promise is of steaming tea

and hot brown buns and butter.

Before that, the blaring vox humana, tremulant

in the 8’, or some paltry diapasons and reeds.

The white smell of lilies.

 

Now all this ordinariness

floods into the marvellous.

Here are the old women, batty in their best hats,

revealed as holy things.

 

There is no sitting in the pew

but on the stone, or some bear spices.

They raise their eyes, their voices, their tight-curled

shampoos-and-sets, to heaven

mouths awake with song.

 

And as for me? I consider myself

as rich as a linden tree in June.

The Espirito Santo

Red sky and tall ship.

Barquentine riggings cobweb

on slender mast.

 

Dark hull on maudlin sea,

haunts against the current

up the narrow bay.

 

Shades fall in carrion dust

from bodies bound hand and foot

in iron, heavy, grey.

 

Many faces line like headstones,

cluttered on the brow of broken dawn,

above the bulwark.

 

Behind the rail, or bars,

they wait to disembark in herds

beneath the whip.

 

 

Another Holy Ghost

lit once on unbound waters;

before men made slaves.

The Reliquary

in her painted palm remains;

her own memento.

 

Bound by silk,

sealed in blushing wax.

 

White bone in gold:

grace beneath glass.

 

Gazes, kisses

and Latin letters lovingly declare

a holy thing

in a little space.