'Restoration' (Worcester Cathedral)

Restoration

(Worcester Cathedral)

 

Love slips in,
shakes the disobliging weather
from her folds,
settles tight as a bud
amid the stone topography of hope.

A bad go for her out there,
barred where most needed,
curses pitting her skin.
Forced to watch mercy-boats
bucking on the storm
from behind the iron thread
of harbour fences. 
Lost on the wrong street
far from the ageing mother of five
who are all doing nicely on the moon,
who spiders an x against the weeks
since she heard a voice
that didn’t want to sell or disillusion.

Love looks up,
sees the pageants of succour,
eye blessing eye in a marquetry of glass,
prayer-lights serried, waiting. 
Sees distance lose itself
in rapturous tumbles,
in pillars like the footings of dawn.
Hears the lone introit
of a monk long gone under time
as it wisps across the leads of the cloister.

Love steps out,
unfurls,
again spreads deep and broad upon the day,
again has at the ready way and word
drawn afresh from that vast unspoken.