Jerusalem Stone Wall Heart

“My voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too,

Theme this but little heard of among Men,

The external World is fitted to the Mind.”

The Recluse, William Wordsworth

“If I should be, where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

Of past existence, wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream

We stood together; and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature, hither came,

Unwearied in that service: rather say

With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

That after many wanderings, many years

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.”

LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, July 13, 1798.

William Wordsworth

slowly slowly

Intimations of the Other

in the cool Jerusalem air

facing those ancient stone walls

I feel the presence of the Mystery

on this bleak sunday morning

church bells clanking in competition

(clouds do not fit well the landscape)

but here

now

I feel an overwhelming sense

of the passage of time

my fatherʼs decline

my own creeping aching age

yet- being present in this moment

to the ageless Presence

despite everything changing

even the stones.

Maybe this stone heart

can melt a bit?

Is the Thou then possible?

I feel like praying now

but how?

and to Whom?

and what?

In the stillness of the early morning Jerusalem air

as yet fresh before that burning orb rises in the East,

I find comfort

a sense that, for this instant

all is as it should be

despite the raging sea back home

and the anxiety of the foreboding of the ending.