Edward Storey
South Creake
for Anthony Scott
What violence will expose this peace
or shatter flame-light on cool stone.
Will the respect of ritual or myth
survive beyond the shadow of a faith.
This ancient tower stands against the rain
and darkness deepens with its mystery.
What low-blown whistle through the grass
will flex the nerve and batter down these doors.
Hearing your music now within these walls,
watching completion of a thousand years,
sharing the silence of a candle's hour
moves me again to this late questioning.
Within the chancel burns a light,
and thoughts of incense fill my mind
with dying hyacinths in a room
where I had peace of yet another kind.
Pale shadows weave upon the floor
image and dream and those poor fantasies
that filled my discontented blood.
Now I could lose all those idolatries,
all those ambitions and inflated songs
within one anthem in this ageless night.
Outside, a dog howls through the storm.
Your music stops. The silent pillars wait.
poetrymagazines' note: With acknowledgment to North Bank Night by Edward Storey, published by Chatto and Windus in 1969.
Page(s) 256
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The