He found a new religion
in a church of stories
where the writing sloped like his own
and was strangely familiar
with the various complex results,
although they became more and more sinister,
more allusive and confused:
gas-lights and Gothic revival,
mineral railways and garden cities,
and later (walking through apple trees
in blossom in May),
he made this image –
then let another one be formed
from the debris
of an inconsistent series
of thoughts and words
shrivelled in epigrams,
as his own dark god
-–who created both the lion and the lamb –
became visible,
before hastening away
under the threat of night,
seeming as near
as any suburban garden,
and no further
than where the porch light ends.
Phil Bowen