Lauds -

A brilliant array

          of cloud fractured beams

               sifts through a Romanesque opening

in these dew covered hallowed walls, 

               revealing a spectrum of colour

etched upon a buckling vellum leaf.

                                   The Living Word -

The comforting warmth

          of a hood

                    dispells the anxiety

wrapped in this quivering

          quill clutching hand

as it wrestles with

                    imagination

                             over the depiction of ideas.

Even the strain of a hunched back,

     the toxicity of orpiment,

          the frustration of failing vision,

cannot arrest that inexorable passion

          to still eternity on a velvet surface.


                         The silence of the sanctuary -


Long ago, a cross of rags

                         lay bare on the damp floor

                    of the cloister,

seeking the future,

                    by extolling the past.



Those were times -

               times that came and went

                         and came again,

                                 but now are no longer -

When the azure 

               of the sapphire of the east

                    dominated humanhood,

and gods played dice with mortals -

               When giants walked in our footsteps

forever seeking the shadows 

                    which we avoided -


     The glow of ultramarine.


                    The passing of a vision.

Daily, the hand attempts to trace

                              the recovery of world lines -

Daytime exemption from the Offices

          glasnosts the spirit whose prayer

lies with the symbolic description of

               the Ancient One

                                through lampblack and vermilion.


                      The silence of the sanctuary -


          A spray of floral patterns -

                    figurative hermeneutics.

Tired,

          confined to a simple chair,

our hope lies in the inspiration

               that others too, will hope.