The silver net

Chapter 23: AT YOUR FEET

Open in WeRead

About This Book

A sequence of lyrical meditations that shifts between dreamlike visions, confessional solitude, and mythic or biblical reverie. Recurring images of sea and shipwreck, roses and gardens, and masked or legendary figures are used to probe longing, shame, desire, and the hope for spiritual renewal. Poems alternate between dramatic monologue, fable-like sketches, and brief nocturnes, exploring the tensions between illusion and revelation, life and death, and love as both ensnaring and ennobling, producing a compact, contemplative cycle of symbolist-inflected verse.

AT YOUR FEET

A beggar sat on the Temple’s floor,

Gazing around at the pious crowd

That knelt before the cross of gold,

On high amid the perfumed smoke;

Scanning the marble pillars bright,

The costly silks and glittering gems

Upon the priesthood in the choir,

And all the swaying silver lamps

That carried stars of ruby fire:

‘Dreamers and pharisean fools,

The heavens are only coloured void,

Christ is living at your feet

Beneath each beggar’s loathsome rags.’