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Poems

1 Magpies
2 Chernobyl
3 Return to Chernobyl
4 Absence
5 Circumlocution
6 Persephone
7 Erebus revisited
8 Alice's Cat
9 Sometimes I see a cloud
10 Lost Child
11 On the coach to Hay-on-Wye
12 Brecon Cathedral
13 Honeymoon
14 Waiting
15 How can I say I love you?
16 Eclipse of the Moon  
17 Big Issue
18 Resurrection

In Brecon Cathedral

To this church I bring only doubt,
envying those two women kneeling in the gloom,
their heads bowed in a hush of dusty light.
A vase of lilies. Their waxy blooms
spread perfume on the air heady as incense
or the odour of sanctity. Behind a cordon
you can see some children's art, admire their sense
of colour. A cut out Jesus robed in crimson
gazes mildly down at an infant
with a melon smile clinging to his garment.

I suspect I like this place for the wrong reasons,
so cool here our of the sun, away from traffic.
Vidor's Toccata rises to a full diapaison
filling the roof-space with thunderous magic
while over to the right figures in a side aisle
clasp hands in chilly faithfulness.
The intercession book's latest request:
Let me beat Mandy at swimming and
I'll love you for ever must be from one of that class
of kids picnicking there on the dusty grass.

 

Poems for private use only. © Anne Grimes. Email Graphics by Bruce Grimes