I don't know whether anyone would like to comment on the following piece but
it is something I've been pushing about recently following a short stay at a
Cistercian monastery guest-lodge. I'm not a Roman Catholic myself, so the
poem has no doctrinal sensitivities or claims:
*Monk's Guest House*
Some distant schools of stars in swarm
above a spire, and farm,
and drowsing cows. All meat and milk
in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams,
untroubled by the muscled tower's
electric prod, its bells' peals' starry tongue
this herd has never heard
since its first day tired. My watch face
says three and my slow animal wakes
as the bells' claw and clamber breaks
the burr and mumble
of where am I am. Legs and arms, feet
to hands assemble
like lines racing a plough. I snub
forward into night-buttoned, carbon
promising air, head down
toward shell spills of crackle, side
slips of gravel and a door
homed low on a still stone hull
where a shy
bay chapel waits
us and the hushed sparse wash
of dark and morning vigil.
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is
that none of it has tried to contact us."
- Calvin & Hobbes
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
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blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
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