Ex Cathedra
Beyond St Catherine’s Hill,
the river
sluices through the city,
channels
Romans cut
dividing the Itchen into
die-straight races,
and beyond, surrounding the
Cathedral, water meadows,
a roebuck there glimpsed
midair,
then again invisible into
briar
and scrub elm.
Across the sunken fields −
plague pits, perhaps,
or plough roads the
centuries abandoned −
the near distance reveals
a clutter of salvation,
stone-cut saints
in arcs of masonry above the
crypts.
Bones
in painted boxes, the Lady Chapel’s worn geometry,
the steepling stairs, the
upper room
and Gospels
fiery under glass − faith’s a dusty business, low-lit,
these kells
the
preserve of white-gloved keepers,
anon illuminations
except the epithets, Master of the Genesis Initial,
Master of the Leaping Figures.
The saved dead
thread the margins, anchored
in the inks −
a commonplace of wombs
confirmed, that
the beating of the heart
begins
before its chambers form.
The musicians prepare for
evening service.
The Wykehamists, and Pilgrim
School scholars,
they too, prepare, the
timpani readied −
outside, discreet black
Saabs
through streets
the Romans engineered.
The
meadows drain into a river
with no memory of itself,
tricked long since
from its true course,
forgetful still
by the ruined mill, the
wider spaces
claimed by garrisons.
Along the banks, in weir
spray,
a smudge of wren
evaporates through ferns.
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