Through a Glass Darkly

[delph_ambi]

Through a Glass Darkly

Salvation through a pane of broken glass
is tricksy, sly, ephemeral, unkind.
Escape will prove unlikely till the sight
of wild blue cedars eases gnarlish minds
returning us to mottled green, a frown
of ochre, star-shaped, wrinkling-itchy time.
The flagrant walls of number six-six-six
are pencilled in with indecisive slips
twixt cup and lip. We'll triumph as
we draw back yellow blinds, discover when

the plum with spotted suppurating scabs
a wrinkled relic, left beside a pear
of blue-green glass, stuffed wide with bubblegum
was poisonous. You look, but cannot see
if cobwebs hide the answers, if my truth
will come to you between the rotten planks
redundant in the paint of palest blue
and speckled hen-like teeth a sting, a dance,
a crumbling house with balustrades, a chance,
a ha-ha, distant trees, ploughed fields. No need

for me to answer Father John's request
for railway lines through graveyards, now the park
is infrared to hide the churlish priest
whose tri-corn hat is lit with tongues of flame
to turn the cherubim to piles of ash.
And so we leave the loon beside the lake
of purple bubbles, slowly turning blue
amongst El Greco skies and strings of beads
redundant lemons, leaves, a tabby cat,
a clean device and Sirius, who swims

to Isabella's shop near Hampstead Heath
to greet her dog: a wide and angled beast
whose random paws will trip him when he runs
to church, down cobbled streets and back across
the sand where once a filigree of twigs
behind a building, lonesome as a song,
redeemed the boy elected on a stone
across a shining nave, so long ago.
Remember all my words when seeking your
salvation through a pane of broken glass.

[LeeThompson]

Sweet poem, Delph!

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Lee 

[Woody]

.

[Edward Fellers]

Dark and moody with beautiful discriptive words. Very nice and well done.

[marc_chagall]

Thanks Edward. This one went on to be published in Not Only The Dark.