Resurrection
(St Gregory's Minster, Kirkdale, Yorkshire)
I watched
as the Saxon architects and builders
chose the site for the little church -
a quiet spot by the beck;
I watched
as they hewed the stones and
the church took shape;
their great love-of-heart shining,
their praise,
their hearts glorifying the meadow;
I watched
as the graveyard slowly filled
with the bodies of the saints -
centuries without time - :
the farmers and their labourers,
the stonemasons, the craftsmen,
the women-the-much-loved, the
children-dears;
I watched
as the mourners spent their kneeling grief
and got up, danced barefoot in the grass
among the gravestones
their joyfulness at the impossibility of loss,
their blissfulness at the impossibility of birth, of death;
at being only That,
That Unnameable Unnamed;
I watched
as the clouds cleared in the blue sky,
as the Divine Rain dissolved mind;
The brook:
I watched as I swam in I past I;
only I.
