Susan Hamlyn
Evensong
Seduced by the polished scent of ancient wood,
lured by a lovely light which softens
edges, lines and contours into harmonies of brown
and gold, we enter the narrow strip of chapel
between the ranks of calm and solemn stalls
and start to think more quietly, travel with more grace.
We sit, adjust the books and papers, assemble
the features of the faces which sit across the aisle
and wait amongst the whispers for a tolling call
which summons all the cassocked men and boys
into a crimson line. The organ crowds the quire
and blends us into singleness and silence.
Evensong is forty minutes. We rise, we sit,
some kneel. The order is the same. We praise,
we ask, we thank. The magnifying music,
whether Tomkins, Dyson, Sumsion, Rose,
or the intoned voices of the Lord's Prayer, runs
through the wooden centuries into our veins.
Despite an overload of blessings, it always ends too soon.
We leave in peace, though with a sense that we
are what is incomplete. We pass the men in red and smile,
liking them, yet wondering again at their belief -
that men like these can kneel and know their words
are heard beyond the architecture of their skulls.
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- Second Aeon
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