Sunday, January 11, 2009

166. LISTINGS

LISTINGS
(Having never visited Tintern Abbey)
-
I have been left off so many lists that I
no longer regard them as essential for anything.
Like Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey, I sense that
something has passed : soothing light, quiet evenings,
open-ended assumptions about the goodness of life.
-
Someone stands next to a gateway, and high
above him the jagged rocks are carved as faces.
The shapes are angels, cherubs, tiny winged things.
Without a knowledge that they are there,
he goes about his clowning unawares.
-
A woman in green and white comes forward.
With a camera, she stands back a few feet, gazes up,
and - with an automatic focus - clicks. Her silence,
and the snapping whir of the camera, both amaze me.
They define a moment I cannot explain.
-
Four-hundred-year-old ruins.
Forty-five-year-old people.
A camera, less than five years developed.
What a picture this all should make....

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