Description
AFTERWARDS
Evensong
After the last fires in the sky
there was nothing, just the empty humming of the wires,
the roads grey rivers stretching out of sight.
We left with no more than we could carry
as our ancestors did, back in the days before
we began to want more than ever we had needed.
All those we passed were scatter-eyed and empty;
they carried their children close like their own hunger –
we heard their stories in their silence.
We had been following a strange cloud a long time
when we descended into a deep green place,
stopped, set down our loads and stood:
A waterfall like the tail of a white horse,
a pool underneath of dark quartz,
a meadow, sheltered and full of wild flowers.
We looked and listened and we knew –
a sanctuary, held in the hands of the hills.
Taken from Evensong Poems by Kenneth Steven