Good News

Won a prize in the Envoi competition judged by Ann Drysdale. Will post the poem, The East Yorkshire Crematorium, after it appears in Envoi.

Vespers At Aghios Charalambos

(This poem was written at Milos in the Cyclades. Many people know of Santorini where the volcano top has created a bay but Milos has a much better "caldera" as you can see in the photo above. The poem derived from me walking to the highest point of the town - to the Church of Aghios Charalambos - the miracle worker. There was a service taking place but only the priest and me were there to participate. The poem is printed in the latest edition of Carillon magazine - many thanks to Graham the editor for choosing it but if you do read the magazine the last line should not be italicised.)



At the top of the village, at the top of the day,
The caldera below is a cooling skillet in the sinking sun.
In Agios Charalambos a white-robed priest flits
Between ikons, lighting the lamps.
Each gutter and flare of candle flame
Reveals miracles performed anew:
Hollow-eyed and churlish a corpse is raised to a second chance;
A dragon flinches before Agios Georgio’s sword.

Between lectern and ikonostasis,
Word and flesh,
The priest chants this joyful mourning of the dying day
eleison…eleison…eleison…

He looks at me, narrow-eyed and questing;
“Catholiki”,I mouth, as if this explains anything
About our shared presence here; we are
Priest, chanters and people together.
Call and response have elided, have become one
Under the painted gaze of long dead bishops and saints

A single bell chimes, the sound palpable,
A measuring–rod for the space between silences.
My steps echo its rhythm into the yard,
Down the cobbled slope to the village;

For the congregation below the day is ending
In bars and tavernas
In hopes of wonders to be worked before next day break.

The May Crownings

(This poem stems from one of my earliest memories. At age 6 I was chosen to carry Mary's crown in procession at the annual May Day celebration at my church - May was, and still is, the month of the BVM. This was 1957 and the Catholic church still did these things. Unbeknown to me I was also carrying the polio which laid me low later that Summer. So, a bittersweet recollection)



Twice chosen was I that May Day morning as we
Prepared to process, shoaling like holy minnows
In the deep green corrugated space of the church hall.
Six years old, tight buttoned into velvet and silk,
A page, hobbled in buckled patent, I stepped out
Towards consecration behind my blue virgin
Mary or Siobhan, Philomena, Fionnula -
The fading schoolyard faces which stare up,
Like evidence of a past atrocity, reject naming now.
But then, awkward and angular,
In elbows and knees that needed growing into,
The girls, sinless in their Sunday dresses,
Cardigans like damp folded wings, held tenderly
Before them baskets of spring flowers as if
They had just alighted and would soon fly on.
Innocent still before heaven I thought the world
Was in that church waiting for me. A crown,
On a cushion the colour of a hematoma,
I carried it past stations of the cross and statues,
Calipered by canyons of parishioners;
Salve Regina, they sang, Salve Regina.
At the node of the aisle crossing we paused,
Priest and altar ahead, sunlight streaming through
Stained glass behind, colouring me purple.
In me an unwanted destiny,
Howling through my bloodstream coursing
Like hounds after hare, hungry for
Neuron and nerve. Marked by chance as elect
In that congregation, no longer carrier but victim,
I raised the cushion straight-arm, achingly high;
The mayflower and thorn crown and me,
As one in the darkness pooling at my feet;
a gnomon, shadow-casting
Into each footstep I made and might ever make.