by Alys Thorpe
OH she was lordly lovely
strode like the Queen of Asia,
through the wide cloisters
up the stairs. Beauteous
in movement, glossy
with brave intelligence
silent and noble like the passing
air. Beauty a mystery,
ungraspable, unfathomable,
one stared as if at deformity,
an effort, simply to believe
what sight, what senses still were left.
I saw hundreds that day, dozens passed close by
some touched, even examined me,
but only she unmet, unnamed, untouched
I remember,
long after the day was done,
the rough shawl draped round her head,
the wake of her passing, blessing,
and the touch of dread.
Her presence.
Can't be gone.
Can't have changed to this sullen malice
following following on,
down through the ages only, lonely,
can't be torn from us, like the heart
torn out of the land,
flesh so intimately
changed by the hook and knife
ka rent from bah and soul
from the cave of the heart,
born for a blast of drossed silver
to the intrusive gaze of an alien mind,
precious for the covers and the cases
and the age the overshaded grief
meant some artistic touch, some hollow
gesture, ignored, ineffectual,
slung aside.
The wake of her passage,
distracts, covetous of knowledge
ignorant science, lords in their own eyes
stumble tumble, walk out walk out
into the desert seeking what home
in the violence of heat, stumble,
grope in the noon day, life !
too strong for such frail souls,
holiness burns, love shrivels
those who already think
they've plumbed the mystery