Return [Poem]Author(s): Howard CarrollSource: The Sewanee Review, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Winter, 1944), p. 80Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27537483 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 20:45
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Ill
CATHEDRAL
Cathedral, treasureless and stricken vault,
behold a congregation, gathered in
beneath these arching centuries, assault
your God and history, as under sin
and treason flesh lies broken. Now the veins
confess through wounds to bandages and hands
of nurses to their gross and sanguine pains while eyes turn up to where an altar stands.
Let nowT your centuries have meaning for
the mind entrapped in days; renew the warm
and tender movements of the heart. And more:
sustain the trust of one before the swarm.
For life?the prostrate in the straw?time kneels
in you, itself at Mass, and breaks its seals.
IV
RETURN
Returned from agony of shrilling steel
and robber flame, his figure falls upon
the land that bore and sold him with the feel
of righteous trade. And, hired to frenzy, sun
and stars alone can state his vacant creed
of lovelessness. So beaten by the hate
of wills upon the anvil-earth, the deed
of thought now loses shape and falls to fate.
In shattered mind the wind replaces tears
with leaves and blowing smoke of brush afire.
This is our lover in the after-years? with sanity in season, not clear fire.
Now what of time and dear, complacent art
to set a trust in mind, sharp love in heart?
This content downloaded from 195.78.108.81 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 20:45:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions