THE SAINTS NEVER LIVED

 

THE SAINTS NEVER LIVED

The saints never lived

Composing the anthems for doomed love

It was not their provenance

I heard the air shining singing to me

In the singeing wind, still music surging

whenever I considered them

Their snowy silence now;

It was all apple blossom 

Radiant on the boughs and I could not

Give it any other name brimful of clouds

That a farther sea composed where light

Never raged and beauty was not staged

But real beyond what I could feel, the margins

Of that country, its interior 

Where they wandered seeking the God forever

Seeking them and earnest as blue skies in summer

Because they only knew

No doomed love

No doomed love at all.

But carried their burdens feather light

Into the Infinite, infinite light.

mary angela douglas 7 june 2024