“Yet these walls sound with echoes of the past,/With whispered prayers which linger in the air/And animate this space – still holding fast:/A shelter from the passing world’s despair.”
A chapel waits in silence by the wood
With stone walls weathered, aged and greyed by time;
Now ivy climbs where once a tower stood,
Without its bell obscured by moss and slime.
Inside, the sun pours freely through the glass
And spreads the colours wide across the stone;
Between the fractured slabs are clumps of grass
That strain against them, beige and overgrown.
Yet these walls sound with echoes of the past,
With whispered prayers which linger in the air
And animate this space—still holding fast:
A shelter from the passing world’s despair.
Its pregnant, sacred silence speaks of grace:
The timeless and the placeless in this place.
Harry Readhead is a poet and critic from London. His work has appeared in The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, and many other titles.
