And nothing pure dies when safe in truth, For truth and life flow from the same deep spring, Restoring, making new each broken thing, Our death and dying fading into youth. And if our doubting hearts required proof, The flowers promise too what time can bring: A crown of roses for a weary king AndContinue reading “Clouds and Crowns No.4”
Category Archives: Autobiography
Clouds and Crowns No.3
And You can reign, though nailed to a tree, A truth my mind cannot as yet contain, Defying my small child’s concept of “reign”, A word that conjures up the king in me: King of the hills, imagination’s sea; The waves cow-tow, the soil receives my train, My dreams subduing everywhere I deign To stretchContinue reading “Clouds and Crowns No.3”
Clouds and Crowns No.2
The promise of green pastures, quiet streams Beckons me, Your shepherd’s hand not far; And so I wander, safe wherever You are, Your sun delighting with its kindly beams, The radiance of Your bright fire; it gleams And glistens, heaven’s welcome door ajar, Sunset splitting sky, a perfect scar. And how it is that YouContinue reading “Clouds and Crowns No.2”
Clouds and Crowns No.1
As part of a bigger sequence of poems that I’m working on, here is the first of a seven-part poem that I will be writing and posting over the next week: a crown of sonnets, a series of interlinking sonnets in which the final line of each sonnet forms the first line for the next.Continue reading “Clouds and Crowns No.1”
Grace, eight or nine years old
Samuel the priest, leading Israel through a process of repentance and then seeing them defeating their old enemies the Philistines, set up a stone monument where they had been victorious and named it “Ebenezer”, meaning “Stone of Help”, declaring that “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” In the midst of our busy and oftenContinue reading “Grace, eight or nine years old”
21 Consolations
Today is the first anniversary of The Consolations of Writing. To celebrate, and to thank all of you for supporting my blog over the past year, I’ve put together a collection entitled “21 Consolations” – an essay and 20 poems reflecting on and reflecting the comforts of the written word. I hope you like it.Continue reading “21 Consolations”
Grace, twenty-eight years old
Weighed down with all the sheep’s clothing I have daily donned, this wolf-face I deny but own, and all my other faces too; smothered in self and this stink-to-heaven stench of all that I have scattered, sown, now reap, decked in dead flowers, sprouting pride, staring in the face of true holiness – a lionContinue reading “Grace, twenty-eight years old”
She Will Have Music Wherever She Goes: Autumn in Europe Days 7 and 8
The old nursery rhyme tells of the fair lady on the white horse, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes making music wherever she goes. A bronze sculpture of her stands at the centre of Banbury village, near the new version of the famous Banbury Cross which the Puritans pulled down inContinue reading “She Will Have Music Wherever She Goes: Autumn in Europe Days 7 and 8”
Belfries, Palaces and a Hiding Place: Autumn in Europe Days 5 and 6
The weather in Groningen being slightly better on my second full day there, we take the opportunity to climb the tower of the Martinikerk, a tower which was first built in the 1200s but has been rebuilt a number of times since then. Nevertheless, it is a formidable structure, notwithstanding the mechanised revolving door thatContinue reading “Belfries, Palaces and a Hiding Place: Autumn in Europe Days 5 and 6”
Canals in the Rain: Autumn in Europe Days 3 and 4
I first began to consider coming across to Europe late last year when good friends of mine moved to Holland. “Of course I’ll come and visit you over there,” I said, and made noises about September 2012 being the time to do it. It quickly began to seem to me a ridiculous thing to doContinue reading “Canals in the Rain: Autumn in Europe Days 3 and 4”
The Consolations of Writing 