335 - Ely Cathedral: Toward Evensong

Ely Cathedral: Toward Evensong

By Anthony S. Abbott

 
Not dusk but its semblance, rain making
the stones cold, March damp, gray sky
blanketing both towers, only the greenness
of grass hinting at July. We shuffle through
western doors, umbrellas dripping. Another
day, another page in the Baedeker.
My wife drifts to the tearoom to warm
her hands. She will read her romance.

I walk down the painted nave expecting little.
Too many days, too many aisles, too many Norman
arches. I remember the words of my professors.
Clerestory, I murmur, and triforium. My head
knows the beauty of these forms, but heart
has flown to landscapes of home. I kneel
in a front pew and close my eyes. I speak
the names of absent friends. I call up faces.

From somewhere music. Beyond me, in the choir,
boys rehearse for evensong. "Kyrie," they sing,
"Kyrie eleison." "Christ have mercy," I echo,
"have mercy," and all at once I see-not boys-
but wheelchairs circling the altar before me,
wheelchairs with children of all ages, who cannot
speak or move their limbs. Muscleless, they sprawl,
heads propped by braces, eyes crossed absently.

I am frightened. My heart beats wildly. In the
choir the boys sing again, their voices pure
as night before first light, while one by one
attendant women turn the children's heads upward.
They point to the light above and all at once
mind and eyes remember the octagon of Ely
and those giant beams of oak hoisted to hold
the glass of the lantern and the eight-pointed

Anthony S. Abbott is a professor of English at Davidson College. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals as well as in a volume of collected poems entitled The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat. This poem appeared in The George Washington Review and is reprinted here by permission.

336 - Ely Cathedral: Toward Evensong

golden star which binds the dome. The children
hear the music, see the cunning of the craft,
the many fingered dome, they sense as I cannot,
the painted hand of God. My eyes swim, knees
ache from the dense wood. I look again into
the lantern's light and down into the children's
eyes. What do they think? Do they ask why God
creates such wondrous sights and helps them

not at all? Do they scream within? I butt
my head against the kneeling rail and watch
their eyes again and the soft hands of the nurses.
Ask them, says my better self, but my lips
spell only silence, legs stalk awkwardly away.
In the bookstore I will read of Etheldraeda,
saint of Ely isle, who married twice
and still remained intact. That will be good.