New Southern Poems

 

By Doug Sangster

First Poem:

I once knew a man whose preferred mode of communication with God was the monologue

His transmitter worked but his receiver was broken, so each day he stood and opened his crowded mouth and let the words file out, until the turnstile bearings were smoking

No one ever told him that silence is golden, until a friend from a mountain put his finger tip to his lips and gently shushed him 

Then a mother from a desert or a brother from an island, I cannot remember which, mustered him up and taught him to stand deaf and dumb, silent as a mannequin

And that is where I saw him last, at rest, quiet as a tomb, one foot on a rung, attentive to the Spirit praying within him 

Second Poem:

It is an eye-opening pleasure to measure time 

Not by the slow moving hands of a clock 

But by the loss of earthly illusions 

Mistaken certainties that dissipate and fade to gray wafting moths that rise and disappear into the dark 

Above the diaphanous flame of God Who burns white-hot within the heart.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!