June 10, 2010

Canterbury 2010 - A Vision and Lament

In the light of the setting sun
I saw the stones of the cathedral
seemed to be made of gold, pure gold.

And the great white crane flew by
on wings that beat so slow, so slow,
much slower than the beating of my heart,
and turned not, but flew on, flew on.

And after sunset, in the dim gray light of evening
I touched the stones of the cathedral
and found they were not gold at all;
not gold but only stone, cold stone.

And the great white crane still flew,
and turned not back
past Canterbury’s cold, cold stone.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

June 10,2010


10 comments:

Kaliputra said...

Beautiful! But the exegetes will spend countless hours digging out all the references to the news of the week. Mine is just to note that The Great White Bird of the sone indeed flies on.

WSJM said...

Very powerful, Tobias. Thank you.

James said...

Absolutely beautiful Bro. Tobiah. I'd like to lift if or my blog.

PunkMonkSF said...

Thank you for this deeply moving elegy Tobias!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Thanks, all, for the kind words. This actually was a vision, a dream I had this morning sometime before 6 a.m. There was one other detail in the dream I didn't include in this elegy: opposite the cathedral were a set of ancient standing stones, fallen into ruin, glowingly green with moss and lichen in the same sunlight that showed the Cathedral all of gold. The crane or egret was not diverted by either but flew between them off to about 10 o'clock (I was facing the West Front of the Cathedral from SW.
I occasionally feel the urge to put a vision into words, and this was one such.

Sherry Peyton said...

Simple, elegant and perfect. Rising above it all, face toward God, yes, that is how I feel about all this.

Erika Baker said...

Thank you for putting it into words, and into such powerful ones at that.

R said...

"I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,your old men shall dream dreams,and your young men shall see visions." Joel 2:28

Thank you, dear Tobias!

Christopher Stephen Jenks, BSG said...

Thanks so much for sharing this Tobias. It was beautiful, but sad too.

June Butler said...

Powerful, moving, and evocative on more than one level. Thank you, dear Tobias, for putting your vision into words. As for the part that you excluded from the elegy...no words.