Pilgrimages

There is an island there is no going

to but in a small boat the way

the saints went, travelling the gallery

of the frightened faces of

the long-drowned, munching the gravel

of its beaches. So I have gone

up the salt lane to the building

with the stone altar and the candles

gone out, and kneeled and lifted

my eyes to the furious gargoyle

of the owl that is like a god

gone small and resentful. There

is no body in the stained window

of the sky now. Am I too late?

Were they too late also, those

first pilgrims? He is such a fast

God, always before us and

leaving as we arrive.

There are those here

not given to prayer, whose office

is the blank sea that they say daily.

What they listen to is not

hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil

that turns saints' bones to dust,

dust to an irritant of the nostril.

There is no time on this island.

The swinging pendulum of the tide

has no clock: the events

are dateless. These people are not

late or soon: they are just

here with only the one question

to ask, which life answers

by being in them. It is I

who ask. Was the pilgrimage

I made to come to my own

self, to learn that in times

like these and for one like me

God will never be plain and

out there, but dark rather and

inexplicable, as though he were in here?

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have to possess it.

Life is not hurrying 

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Not conscious
    that you have been seeking
        suddenly
    you come upon it

the village in the Welsh hills
          dust free
    with no road out
but the one you came in by.

        A bird chimes
    from a green tree
the hour that is no hour
    you know. The river dawdles
to hold a mirror for you
where you may see yourself
    as you are, a traveller
          with the moon's halo
    above him, whom has arrived
    after long journeying where he
          began, catching this
    one truth by surprise
that there is everything to look forward to.