stardust

"Sunday Morning." Author: Robert Minhinnick. (1952).

I choose back lanes for the pace they will impose,
An old perspective half forgotten
Surprising me now as the world slows
With these things the broad road lacked:
Carboys of vitriol stacked in a garage,
Orange hooks of honeysuckle gripping a wall.

Here a Church window becomes an arch of light
And the pitching of a Hymn a brief
Infusion of the air. Voices, and low
Indistinguishable words, the organ´s bass
The foundation for a ritual
I trespass in, that suddenly

Intensifies the day. On the other side
I picture them: the ranked devout
Pulling the ribbons from the black Prayerbooks
And each with his or her accustomed doubt
Submitting to a poetry
Triumphant as the Church´s muscular brass.

Thus Sunday morning: a gleaning
Of its strange wisdoms. The certainty
Of Hymns comes with me through a different town
Of derelict courts and gardens, a stable
Where a vizored man beats sparks from a wheel,
An old man splitting marble in a mason´s yard,

The creamy splinters falling into my mind
Like the heavy fragments of Hymns,
Then walking on, much further, this morning being Sunday.

Author: Robert Minhinnick.