I’m afraid you’ve done me wrong.
On the soft ground around Cathedrals in an ancient land
Awe settles like a fever in a pub,
Like a chill in the fog.
The dome at St. Paul’s has room enough
For a mind stretching to hold the present and the past together,
Staring with unblinking eyes in search of faces,
Seeing only stone –
Stone, stacked and chiseled over long centuries
With tools of soft metal,
Held with softer flesh.
Eyes stunned, offended, seduced
By the aromatic sight of bronze and dark, carved wood,
Of decadent tombs addressed in Latin script,
Of a thousand saints climbing the endless walls, foot upon foot
Of stained glass.
Place a candle on the stand and release a prayer,
Spare two quid for the Kingdom of God.
I see a life of loneliness standing dauntless in front of me,
Gleaming like a flying saucer on a little moonlit knob of earth.
I know it will take me across the stars,
Show me glory beyond the mind’s capacity to create.
I feel the tension rise and fall like an unending Wagnerian prelude –
My neck relaxes from trying to turn,
And I board.
This isn’t solitude, this isn’t serenity –
This is furious velocity-loneliness,
Fiery loneliness that arcs across the sky
And screams through the air, just feet above the ground,
Lighting candles under the black steeples of
Scottish chapels.
This is loneliness that fuels suns,
That shapes planets out of blasted rock,
That chased a monk up Yorkminster tower,
Until he was imprinting each narrow stone step
With a footprint fresh from the fire.
The fury builds with nowhere to go –
–and I will build a cathedral in the stars,
With towers that stretch across the light years of emptiness,
And I will light a candle for all the lonely souls
To call them on their pilgrimage across the drifting void.
What will I say to you when you arrive?
Will I dare to call you brother?
Will I speak to you in grand terms of the longing that drove us?
Will I burst with a smile and with tears, declaring that at last you have arrived, that before us is a long year of rest?
Will I be bold enough to pretend you hear me at all?
On a rocky hilltop engulfed in fog,
A pipe passed in a circle of friends
Drives the anxious shakes away,
Like the lingering call of bagpipes
Banishes my troubled sleep.
