The Place Where Self and World Meet
The Priest loved the Words that flooded the land,
The Children wandering lost in a cardboard
Print of the Garden, its gold walls, its
Angel-filled blue skies. Catholic HQ was
A Lantern above a Sheer Drop. The diseased
& misshapen Tree huddled like a wounded
Soldier in the rain lashing down for Forty
Nights, & a Medieval City slid across
The threshold into Being & Identity.
My mind, as if it had a remote camera,
Switched to the lobby many floors below
Full of Devils, Gargoyles, & Damnation Priests.
Sitting on a shoreline rock I tried to warn
Everyone telepathically but the winds
Blew, yellow leaves fell, Satan's black eyebrows
Met in the middle. The Pilgrimage is
Going to End & we are all going
To Die from the Fall. A Priest appeared, smiling:
"We must finish the Pilgrimage and become
Joined with the Dreaming Bride-Child". I didn't
Understand the Words in the shallows green
& murky. The Girl was praying in the margins
Of Thought, & beyond that was a forest,
Birdsong, fish ripples, cloudy sky, the big
Old House on top of the hill where a blackbird
Lived the Secret Sacred Rite. The struggle
Of Clay to be Clay. Branchless poles of dead wood
Sticking up from the shiny varnished Pews,
The polished wooden floor. The Virgin Mary,
Black hair tied back in a tightly veiled bun,
Opened & closed Her million eyelids
& hundreds of bats flew out of Her body.
I continued to wear the Wings this morning,
Asynchronous events flying just above
The water like blackbirds freed from a cage
On the Boundary where Self & World meet.
Page(s) 24
magazine list
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- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Monkey Kettle
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- North, The
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- Obsessed with pipework
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
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