Today is never yesterday...
Alphege’s Men Build the Organ
And now we take the wind
from the tracts of heaths,
from the snow-scudding blizzard
on the Welsh mountains.
And now we take the iron
that hangs in stone and burn it
to fiery liquid and hammer
its strength to harden
a wood’s metal tones of praise.
More men than built this place
have come to frame
Alphege’s music-maker.
Its crack can be heard
from a mile away
and only an army of God
can bring it into life.
And now the people
who had no courage
will fight the organ with
voices of new holiness.
And now we take the wind,
for God is great. The thunder
of our faith is great.
The bull of Matthew and Ezekiel
bellows His greater music-making
through the shaking stones,
the clamour of the universe
and in the unseen world
its raucous, sacred uproar .
Carmen 4.7
Full snows have melted.
Leaves shoot on the boughs of trees
and in the fields the grass greens again,
as the river’s height reduces to its bed.
The status of the earth is changed.
The girls are confident and free,
as naked as the mythic, woodland
statues in the park.
Melt comes after ice, and springtime
comes soon afterwards,
and then summertime becomes
the past and autumn
once more scatters apples on the grass
only to change again as winter
stills the land. Whatever the skies have made
to suit the seasons; wolf’s moon
after hunter’s moon
follows with moonlight
to where the dead lie,
whom once we praised or knew.
Death’s day comes, whatever patter
contradicts, So let us celebrate
your human heart, as to what it feels,
no legacy can lay a claim
for we are dust and shadows.
Your family tree, your eloquence,
your justness will not befriend you,
once you’re done with living .
They are in the night, the lovers now,
despite their innocence,
for love alone cannot compete
with time and fate still
regulates the friendships comrades
owe despite the passions of past great men.
