BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

Jack Williams CHURCH

Last week I stood asleep on settled dust before your walls raised over anguished earth, with each stone set to vanquish death, yet crushed to ruin. I raised you to my hollow breath and tasted all you were. The livid dust lives for the Galilean’s virgin birth. Placenta accreta, transfusions, stars. All bare to the blasphemer their timeless scars.

I pitied you your centuries, you shell of heaven’s throne. Even the graveyard yews are gone. A yawning chasm halfway to hell devoured the garden and vanished tombs. All here’s as silent as a rusted bell.

The only life the writhing ivy, which pursues the figures of saint and seraphim to claim for nature what of heaven’s ruins remain.

And yet – what grace! A single face adorns the ruin of fragment glass, and still prevails. Aglow as flames within the tomb, born as morning star upon the mourning veil of dawn, the face of life-in-death reborn.

The Word, salvation, wine in the grail. Another face upon the myriad I mourn, and yet within there is that which is glad of what is not. Of Rome behold the mounds of bright eternal stone – her famed antiquities; while on volcanic ground, alone, unbound, the Citadel of Sigiriya speaks in shades not sound. From Tripoli, gaze round from writhing sea to rising snow-capped peaks. Marvels amid the vanities of Man. His world a glorious etching, but in sand.

When stone is stone once more, and all design upon the form forgot, return therefore the mineral to the mine; and any sign of our paeans to the gods will be poured out to the clay of nature’s orphaned shrine. I tread upon this tomb, each step assured that all the histories’ vain enmities and amities are ash. O Humility –the majesty of ruin!