heaven – poem prayer silence

Six perspex soldiers
Sitting in Evensong
– Holy is the true light and passing wonderful –
Barely there,
Less substantial than shadows,
Just an outline, a thickening of the light
And a winking brightness on ear and shoulder
Where the young men would have sat
Who are gone.
Holy is the true light lending radiance
Making visible the gaps in other lives,
The absence, the grief.
These that endured in the heat of the conflict
Are now translated into light everlasting,
Held in eternity, their mud and blood
Transmuted into rejoicing,
Their might-have-been
Resolved into alleluias.
Yet here below
Where loss and grief are holy
Their absence shows in its true light
Of pain and love together,
Gone but not gone.

tRuth 2018

There but not there is a public art project to commemorate the 1918 Armistice.
https://www.therebutnotthere.org.uk

The words in italics are from the text of an anthem by William Harris.

image copyright tRuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Sails
Huge and rippling in the twilight
Gathering in the imperceptible breath
Drawing on the solitary mariner
On the calm and silent sea.
This is the sea Galēnē that knows no storms
No shore, no tides, no end, where each sailor
Journeys alone and mapless.
Stars there are, and fogs, and rarely
The sweet track of moonbeams leading onward
For a while.
You may set out
Hoisting the great sails of your hopes
Eager for the hidden harbour of your journey’s end.
But the way is long, and the journey
Requires great store of patience
And skill in returning to the sea
That eludes the sailor
Where one day’s journey is undone the next
And the breathing of the waters in the silent world
Is the same, offering no landmarks,
No sense of progress. Here are no seabirds,
No whales to offer company,
Only the quiet twilight and the moving air
That just stirs the sails.
A seasoned mariner might say
They sail at different depths
Of this puzzling ocean:
Skimming silver waves at one time,
At another forging through dim depths
As though they sailed the deep blue currents
Fathoms down.
Yet always the great sails catch the air
Impelling the onward journey of the little skiff
Where the sailor scans the empty water without compass
Longing for the hidden place, the journey’s end.
Sometimes a light is caught
Reflected in the curving fabric high above,
Revealing lovely shapes of light and shadow
A beauty born of star or moonlight on the shining sea.
Then the mariner longs for the lights of harbour
Heart lifting to a hope of morning
The sun rising over heaven-haven, the heart’s long home.

tRuth 2015

This poem describes the experience of contemplative prayer.

image: Pixnio