Sacred by Tim Powell
What is the sacred? I begin
To form an academic line
Then stop.
The memories return,
Moments not for my dull analysis.
Holy Communion in a sunlit room
Love-filled sermon in a golden abbbey.
Evening Prayer in an ice-cold chancel
Latin chanting in a soaring nave.
Sudden silence in a darkened chapel.
Windrush and rain and ancient stones.
And here, graves in the grass, names erased
As the sun-dial's days pass on.
Fractions of still eternity behind the wheeling world.
Each no more, all told, than a fleeting clarity,
Like a glimpse, caught then,
In the corner of the eye.
(a non-prose contribution to the service on June 2010)
What is the sacred? I begin
To form an academic line
Then stop.
The memories return,
Moments not for my dull analysis.
Holy Communion in a sunlit room
Love-filled sermon in a golden abbbey.
Evening Prayer in an ice-cold chancel
Latin chanting in a soaring nave.
Sudden silence in a darkened chapel.
Windrush and rain and ancient stones.
And here, graves in the grass, names erased
As the sun-dial's days pass on.
Fractions of still eternity behind the wheeling world.
Each no more, all told, than a fleeting clarity,
Like a glimpse, caught then,
In the corner of the eye.
(a non-prose contribution to the service on June 2010)
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