Everything is made of water says children
Passing Oundle
Nene got swollen and bled all over
Some of the water won't move
in place (like the minister's hair)
Old women's voices mostly
sing "All that I am"
and I stop myself crying
scratch out
pretend heart
Sermon comes out on paper and flutters off
Tony does the gospel reading to be heard
with Islington traces
fenny revenge unsticking things
trembled concrete
floor warps
thin gloss
paint tears
and thin
dark etching
spider cracks
Jesus in pictures All creatures
a donkey a cow a goose and a sheep
plain white blind remembering
stained glass dimensionless
hardly there and wonderful
The odd brother says, "They set out
the pegs carefully for each thought".
Five feet of sellotaped canes for
orange feather duster
that is tenderness
Outside blue is more than any arrangements
going up and up and up
Dispossession
Strewn clouds some
full others feathered
going grey
uncoordinated
very slow
danced in
A beautiful (and believable) oscillation of feeling here, in the emotional space between a (perhaps necessary) distance --
ReplyDeleteand I stop myself crying
scratch out
pretend heart
-- and the engulfing emotional moment that appears to provoke that expression of standing-off, in the order of events here... yet in another (nonchronological, over-arching) way also seems to include and contain it, and us, and maybe even that Big Everything, in its universal application --
All that I am, all that I do,
All that I'll ever have, I offer now to you.
Thank you, TC.
ReplyDeleteHere was one of those occasions where no set distance could be arrived at. You're right to draw out the lines of that sung sacrificial prayer. Traces of an older Methodism, that fierce devotion of the Primitives with all time folding in to the moment of holy action. My father's roots are in the Welsh stream of Wesley's odd Jesuit flavoured take on Evangelicalism.
The place: Thorney Chapel. Attendence has reached a critical low, the building gives way to the Fens and the remaining congregation, cash poor, have to find somewhere else to worship ("The Abbey" is not an option).
I think TC has pegged the essence of this beautiful offering perfectly, as always.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Vassilis. He does have a knack for getting to the heart of a thing.
ReplyDelete