When the water in the basin overflows, becoming
A stream that runs through a wood; when the flowers
on
the carpet
Are turned into real blossoms and the trees
Are human - some seductresses and dangerous,
Some maternal and protective; when you sleep in an
arbour
Observed by the bright eyes of birds, till, at midnight,
They come without faces, the dancers -
Those who in life wore masks, and now
Are condemned to be featureless; when a book in the
library
Is partly here in our world, and part in another;
When the librarian's ghost is a raven is Adam;
When innocence is under threat from goblin
troglodytes,
From corrupt courts, from hunting white panthers;
Maternal presences are concealed
In secret drawers in unvisited turrets,
At the back of the North Wind; when a fire of roses
Purges perception, and you hold,
Among those images, an unbroken thread,
And goodness is as ordinary as having your breakfast,
As being feds spoonful of porridge
By a woman both old and young - she is that Wisdom
Boethius knew, and Hermas.
[This poem, a gift by John Heath-Stubbs to the George
MacDonald Society, was first read by the poet at the
1991 AGM of the Society]
