Love Poem

[heslopian]

She is like the churches of my ancestors:
pointed, ornate and Christian,
divorced from the Pagan and Greek,
whose droppings are still smeared
across our English towns.

She is Pugin's dream:
the Palace of Westminster
restored as a tribute to You,
an ancient door leading back to the times
before the Protestants cried out,
forcing us into a spiritual desert.

I'd rather be tortured in a Catholic hell
than live forever in this secular Sodom,
if You would let me see her face
carved on a brimstone spire.

Grace dances through her eyes
like a tortured martyr.
When I saw her last - sheltered by a giant tree,
cradling a book as she read half-aloud,
her lips miming each word,
and her sun-coloured hair
caught in a cage of lace -
I wanted the grace in those eyes
to work a heavenly violence upon me.

If she'd stood and turned around
her gaze, focusing intensity
to a rapier's point,
would have set that tree on fire.
Together we'd have witnessed
a hundred birds exit,
while each branch blackening
became a testament to Your voice,
and I'd have never seen
such a beautiful arson.