Psalm 139:23
At one time,
when there might have been a God,
everything vaguely
convent, doves
and serpents in the Tree
of Knowledge, gospel
whispered down the galleries
of rain,
I would have been awake for almost
nothing in this perishable world,
only a drift of rose, or cardamine,
along the backroad home, wind in the trees,
the angel half-revealed, improbable,
lighting the hedge like a flame
in the green
of morning.
No convent now.
Only the given world and a hint
of absence, almost
perfect, like a good
feng shui, or like the sudden lull that comes
late in the afternoon, when an angel passes,
sunlight dusting the pines
by the harbour wall
and nobody saying a word
till the day is done,
the backroads leading
everywhere but home,
pilgrim again, beyond all destination,
white in the light of the moon, white in the dawn,
white in the daylight
and haunted by nothing at all.
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