The Isle is Full of Noises

What if, tomorrow, after your coffee

after your Wheaties, while you're buttoning your clothes–
a dove descends and inspects your chimney?
   (What if it doesn't?)
      Expect nothing. Suppose.

What if, while putting your room in order,
after you've stashed every thing where it goes–
you see that your mirror's haloed in foxfire?
   (What if it isn't?)
       Expect nothing. Suppose.

What if, during your smoke on the parkbench,
after your cogitations, before your doze–
who should kiss you but a leftover virgin?
   (What if she doesn't?)
      Expect nothing. Suppose.

What if, suddenly, deep in a bookstore,
a ghost voice comes leap-frogging over the rows–
the voice says, "I love you." It's your father's.
   (What if it isn't?)
       Expect nothing. Suppose.

What if, one evening, watering your bean patch,
kite-caught, you quicken: you know what God knows–
the salt of your tears withers the sproutlings–
   What if it doesn't?
       Suppose. Suppose. Suppose.

-- Sam Hudson, found here: https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/hudson/IsleIsFull.html

Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge

File into yellow candle light, fair choristers of King’s

Lost in the shadowy silence of canopied Renaissance stalls
In blazing glass above the dark glow skies and thrones and wings
Blue, ruby, gold and green between the whiteness of the walls
And with what rich precision the stonework soars and springs
To fountain out a spreading vault – a shower that never falls.

The white of windy Cambridge courts, the cobbles brown and dry,
The gold of plaster Gothic with ivy overgrown,
The apple-red, the silver fronts, the wide green flats and high,
The yellowing elm-trees circled out on islands of their own –
Oh, here behold all colours change that catch the flying sky
To waves of pearly light that heave along the shafted stone.

In far East Anglian churches, the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass
Buttress with prayer this vaulted roof so white and light and strong
And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.

--John Betjeman (1906-1984), British poet and writer, UK Poet Laureate from 1972-1984

Image from Wikipedia

From Crossings

On St. Brigid's Day the new life could be entered
By going through her girdle of straw rope
The proper way for men was right leg first
Then right arm and right shoulder, head, then left
Shoulder, arm and leg.
Women drew it down
Over the body and stepped out of it
The open they came into by these moves
Stood opener, hoops came off the world
They could feel the February air
Still soft above their heads and imagine
The limp rope fray and flare like wind-born gleanings
Or an unhindered goldfinch over ploughland.

--Seamus Heaney (1935-2013), Irish poet, translator, teacher, essayist and winner of the Noble Prize for Literature

St. Brigid's Day is February 2.