In The Poetry

‘There are two literary quartets alluded to is this poem. There’s a quotation from the Alexanndra Quartet, and a quotation from T.S. Eliot’

Attitudes of Prayer

After Beethoven, Quartet in C sharp minor, Op 131

One hundred and thirty-one approaches
to the problem of God.
[...]

Hay-on-Wye

Slim as a nun, I lie along
the margin of a borrowed bed
whose springs are texting through my bones,
Abandon hope. Abandonment –

ecstasy of fall. I gaze
up into the godless dark
as if it might disclose some way
of getting right back, to the start

of that unselfconscious wish
for (old-fashioned diction …) joy.
And dark stares back. [...]

The Plunge

Grace is the law of the descending movement.
[...]