Poetry

Zone of Death
by Brother Antoninus

Wind is not nigh.

No Holy Ghost,
Spirit outspilt,
Burnt this charred day.

What sin did this?
Could I?

Hot light blares.
Stars, outblistered now,
Mark time, extinct.

Night might bring
The seasonal constellations
In its sphere,
But night is nowhere.

Sun. Sand.
The noon-crazy jays
Cackle and gibber,
Jar on the gritted ear.

Dawn sneaked in unsmelt.
No wine, no water here.

Now the lance-riddled man
On yon pronged tree,
Stretched in the death-tread there,
Opens his executing eye
And gibbets me.

Poetry

SORROW

Sorrow is true for everyone-a word
That illiterate men may read
By divining in the heart
God's human name, and natural shroud.

Sorrow is deep and vast-we travel on
As far as pain can penetrate, to the end
Of power and possibility; to find
The contours of the world, with heaven aligned
Upon infinity; the shape of man!

Kathleen Raine