Journey out of the West

Watch man with his buffet bag
Drunk-stumble down the swaying train.

Outside
Hedges a green blur
And beyond them hills
Sunlit yellow and blue under cloudshadow
As we hurtle towards Birmingham.

A yellow field of rape,
A dark wood
A tree in splendid isolation
A crow alighting on a telegraph wire.

Now the sun has suddenly left:
Still on the horizon high-stacked cloud
Catches the last of light

Behind a field of grazing sheep
Smoke from a fire rises;
Sky whizzes blue-white in
Trackside puddles;
Trees deepen towards dark.

I am facing away:
What I see has already gone.

I'm backing away from the day,
Aware only of the past.
I’m blind to the future:
Where we're going
Is a twilight guess.

Christopher Warren
Copyright: By application

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Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts

An imagined womb-
like darkness.
Light neither of the sun
rising nor setting but
diffused, crepuscular.
Over such must the pregnant
Spirit have brooded.
The burnished icons
address me with their stern,
gentle eyes, delving
into my unquiet privacy;
my shadow freedom to be separate.
Something is happening: beyond
the screen that marks
the limit of what can be known
a delicate descant of chimes
as incense fills little heaven.
I cannot grasp what
these things mean.
For the first time, I am
content not to know.
A phrase flares up
From the praying heart,
‘Master, it is good to be here.’
It is good, to be,
here.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application

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