Abstract Poems

	Tomb It is shrine-dark Above tallow sticks Bidden night sins Bend the rood screen Silence percolates Time into its shell And is broken Sudden as a miracle And flutters meekly Through the rose Petals smoking The teeth of angels What magic or demon Do these hands pressed Hard as kernels Taste upon white hairs? Perhaps a flute of breath A tambor of shivers Shaking upon armour Or a fanfare of wings But there is no fissure In the candle white And no blood brush Painting the deed clean And no cherub balancing High on the bosses Misses a foothold For the tendrils of breath As a Becket, cassocked, falls Making a red dais Of maroon-wet stone Crumpled in folds of cloth Whilst weeping footsteps Creep from the nave And trace stigmata Upon the king's white © David Incoll 2001
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