Philip Higson
Lichfield Cathedral at night
One of the three proud gravity-taunting spires
Reaching far above that massy shrine
Was masked from us
By a reticulated cubist tracery
Of tubular steel rods,
Bewilderingly innumerable,
Angularly fixed one to the next,
Forming the splints of a time-battered limb,
Mementoes of the ephemerality
Of all matter-fashioned things.
But as the eroding wind
Swept keen across the plain on which we stood
Forgathered in old friendship
Questing a spirituality beyond vicissitude,
Those tiny tautly-clinging needle strands
Looking to us like a transparent gauze
Sheathing a lovely and grace-gifted form,
Were uttering, we gradually noticed,
Incessant strains of sweet Aeolian song,
With an unearthly voice.
And because craning floodlights shone their gaze
From before that kinged and propheted façade
Upwards to a tapering stone,
A vague sublime giant shadow of a spire
Built out of nothing more than space and air -
The atmosphere that rises, slowing thinning,
To the now diagnosed black vacuum
That mocks archaic faith -
Was cast onto low churlish listless clouds
That dared to mask the Heavens.
Page(s) 6-7
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