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    Detail from Behind School Street painting by Bruce Herman

    Poem: A Lens

    By Malcolm Guite

    June 2, 2017
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    • Gail Hart

      It was amazing at Oxbridge '17 to hear this poet, see the art, and have music..

    That All, which always is all everywhere
    —Donne

    Not that we think he is confined to us,
    Locked in the box of our religious rites,
    Or curtained by these frail cathedral walls,
    No church is broad or creed compendious 
    Enough. All thought’s a narrowing of sites.
    Before him every definition fails,
    Words fall and flutter into emptiness,
    Like motes of dust within his spaciousness.

    Not that we summon him, but that he lends
    The very means whereby he might be known,
    Till this opacity of stone on stone, 
    This trace of light and music on the air,
    This sacred space itself becomes a lens
    To sense his presence who is everywhere.

    painting of a street

    Bruce Herman, Behind School Street, 1984 Used by permission. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Contributed By MalcolmGuite Malcolm Guite

    Malcolm Guite is a poet, priest, and lead singer and guitarist for the blues-rock band Mystery Train.

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