Ephemeral Dreams

I don't remember ever having written the word Proprietress in my life. What does that mean in this context or is it just a pretext or text? Just joking with words they are such fun. How nice that you felt what I felt when I was writing this poem, simple in its way, honest and from the heart, although I have to admit I do not belong to any 'ism's' or more plainly religions, although the Bible has always an awesome seriousness about it as have all the greatest works of literature. Such as here in Mervyn Peakes sounds poems - one of my all time favourite poems (now I am NOT comparing myself to any of this):- THE SOUNDS by Mervyn Peake 1941. Across the ancient silence of the ear Meandered the lost sounds as aimlessly As those that down the aisles of desolate Cold cathedrals wander when at midnight A window lost in a high cliff of darkness Is tapped by branches or the wings of birds Brush at its leaded panes; or when a great And gull-winged Bible in a sudden draught Rustles its sacred pages and the naves Whisper of how a midnight leaf of Amos Is lifting in the darkness, or a gust Rattles the sheets of Jonah; from a vase On the high altar a dead frond falls swaying Through a black fathom and the flagstones sigh For a cold second - yet the summer light Played on our faces, warmed the impersonal flesh Of neck and wrist and on the dusty ground Our short, dark shadows anchored us in sunshine. Five roads converged and where they met it seemed It was the very focal point of silence, Though these five radii were not from worlds Of hypothetic beauty, nor slid in To the dead, crystal centre of a theory Nor, though they meet in an unearthly silence Had they through any earthly logic slid Like icy shafts or strings of lunar light; Oh no, they were five roads of broken brick That bred where they converged death's empty disc, For grief can cut a circle as exact, But deeper than the men of geometry Could ever score in regions of no blood. How fragile in the emptiness they seem. I can recall a group of lonely sounds, Of little sounds that died as they were born. Nine persons stand beneath a lifeless building Singing of Jesus; what nostalgia That far, lit name evokes as for a moment Companionless, it wanders through the sunshine. Oh what can be more lonely as it fades Through sunshine than the naked name of Jesus? The empty air decays and hangs; the metal Heel of a soldier's boot clinks in the same Hollow of sterile space, and in the same Hollow of sterile space an old man coughs; His white beard prods it as he nods his head,  Prods up and down through space in sweet agreement At what the woman on the box is saying. A clock has emptied its steel throat of three Boulders that roll slow globes of cold through sunshine, And as they die the voice they had interred In the doomed notes breaks free again and flows Like water liberated from thick shadows That brood beneath a tunnel of three arches. Behind the group against an iron railing Leans, like a figure from a Hogarth drawing, A hunchbacked man, and he strikes a match The sound speaks gunfire in the sunny darkness. High cliffs surrounding the warm void are staring From lines of dead eye-sockets. There are caves And gulleys where no summer waters flow And gleam with fish or seaweeds pink and gold; The walls are dry and no anemones Cling to the bricks, and though the sun burns on There is no radiance. Above There is no moving cloud to prove the sky Is not a lifeless ceiling of blue plaster Dead as the cliffs of brick; dead as the sun; Dead as the space through which the sounds meander; Dead as the five converging roads that meet Together as the focal point of silence. ____________________________ Great and gul winged Bible...what a bout that for a description. it makes me feel this:- "DARK CATHEDRALS" ref "The Sounds" Mervyn Peake by Ann Harvey (Waddicor) Draw the curtains, turn out the lights (here in the Grasmere talks). "The Sounds" by Mervyn Peake. Many of you have been to Europe, particularly France in the late 50's, 60's and from the brilliant Summer sunshine made your way through the two-sided double doorway's, swept the heavy velvet curtained entrance to one side and plunge into a towering dark stone Cathedral, into the cold, the eyes blinded for a moment in the pitch black interior; you begin to pick out the rows of candles on the far side, and a shaft of light that has crept in unawares to light up an old wooden chair, or even part of the altar cloth, the eyes of Jesus and Mary Magdalene become visible; you move along the soft dark-bodied church aisles, hearing mumbling prayers and seeing silhouetted against the blaze of candles the genuflecting, cross-miming prayer-reciting devotees, all dressed in black. The lively conversation of the sunny outdoors is abruptly reduced to a whisper in the ear, there seems to be silence demanded of one and one falls silent. This in itself is an awesome experience, a revelation of the subconscious power and mystery of religion, which grabs the imagination of those that enter and transforms them then and there into religious beings; many people with scarfed heads are made out in the dimness, tip toeing along for fear of disturbing angels and devils that might be lurking in the shadows. Dust travels along a sudden beam of light that picks out the three coloured tiles or the great flagstones of the uneven floor; row upon row of chairs already having abandoned themselves to everlasting prayer, stand/sit waiting for their prey to pray upon their straw seats; you take a seat and as you do, the chair lets out a harsh scraping sound that starts into the air and echoes away behind the altar, almost fear one feels at its sudden discordant noise. Now more used to the light we see along passages and that there are small chapels along the sides, each with their group of scarved prayer-makers and candles. The musty air is pungent and strange. Then in the grey milky light one makes out the high altar with mother Mary, her tear forever frozen on her cheek, poised to mirror all who look at her and be captured in its tiny globe of light, its warm look of embrace ever upon her son Jesus, hanging forever on his cross, his crown of thorns, the trickling red blood, the downcast head with eyes uplifted, the whole sagging sadness of an injustice expressed and dramatised to convert all to his cause, his life's miracles and his God but most of all his love, his love of his "father", his mother, his priests and as great as the embrace of all the world. Those who are conned by this scene find that it becomes the very essence flowing in their veins for ever and ever. If not, it is a macabre theatrical performance, almost a horror enactment of human torture. The gigantic Bible rests on an eagle, only a priest with a strong arm can turn its cover over and open the page where the lesson of the day is to be read out. Suddenly from the darkness comes a procession of white clad people led by the high priest swinging incense and, all in Latin, chanting psalm-like prayers, sounds fill the silence. Genuflecting and crossing themselves profusely, the congregation take part in the poetic charade, as in charades acting out yet again the story to be delivered that particular day, at that particular hour, always on the alert for any variation, which is seldom the case The sounds now fill the floor, the chairs seem to sit up more and the curtains seem to sway in time with the chanting, the dust rises with it all up and up and up and one sees that the roof of this building reaches almost to heaven or becomes one with it as it gets more and more difficult to decifer. Great and Bach-like powerful pillars with spanning arches grab ones heart that rides on them as on the huge waves of the sea, captured again in the fervour of the experience and the awesome quality of it strangeness. Then silence reigns again, only the occasional placing of this and that, one cannot see what, being placed here and there by the priests at the altar make any audible vibrations along with the regular breathing of the people present. This silence seems to echo the seeming great void-like silence of the sky, the heavens, the universe out there black as black beyond any human imaginings into the unknown millions of light years away. An awesome experience, never forgotten. _________________________ Now you must think me a little nuts? Thank you proprietress-mine I must now see something of yours too. Its a big site here and I haven't seen all yet. I love that poem because of its rhythm, its words, its spatial depths, its sounds and silences, its visions, its theatrical settings, its light and fire, its contrasts of dark and light, its sensitivity to nature's quieter comments, its strangeness, its movements, its towering, its loneliness, its timelessness, its gold, I love it so.