Selected poems
Another vision
After the vision,
when she had seen a figure,
an angel as she described it
(she had no proof);
an angel who spoke to her,
she had no doubt
though many doubted her.
And when her betrothed,
her husband, opened himself
to dreams and grace,
one relative asked
if she was happy;
if she loved him.
There was of course a marriage feast.
All came mumbling
their disgust and mistrust
as if it was theirs to offended
to judge and redress.
Such is the sway of whispers
at the market.
Then, at the summons of the Romans
and their census takers
(people who tick boxes),
the couple travelled the cold distance, she at full-term.
His relatives,
all but one,
turned them away.
— Marlene Marburg
Notre Dame de Paris
The stars were reeling as they watched
The exaltation of life that was blooming in the stone:
It rose in its tall verticals from the grace and welcome of the earth,
That swooned far, far below,
As canny masons hefted the limestone
Into vast beatitudes of grace;
Shipwrights inverted their minds to groom the oak,
So that it would soar,
As if a celtic monk had charmed a serpent into a holy phrase;
as the glaziers of Paris composed the enormous glass
Into ten thousand psalms of roseate light,
Affirming in limestone, oak and glass
The best estimations of the people's faith
To be held in the gentle custody of the Virgin,
So that the quiet aspiration of prayer might
Be breathed to rise like kissed children
into a majesty of space
That rested upon a singular setting stone
hewed to bear the weight of all eternity.
— Grant Fraser
Christmas 2015
The baffled moon drifts its progress
Through the immensity of this strange,
Uncharted night:
A night when a broadcast of carolling voices
Bells the music of the holy eve;
When singers surrender their rest
Until the last of their joy
Is melodiously spent in song.
And so, this weary, moon-giddied earth
Is yet graced;
Graced by the quiet melodies of breath
Of snug and sleeping bairns,
Graced, too, by the excelsior of light
Brimming in the Christ Child's morn.
— Grant Fraser