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Thursday 30 July 2015

Millions

A million hapless feet
Have trod here.
Many have been attached
To humans.

These are tiles familiar
And polish-worn.
This is a spot where
People stop.

Maybe, some think, maybe
People stand here
Because the stained-light
Is perfect,

That at certain times of day
The rays are soft
The dust-motes dance to
Blessed streams;

That the air, and the stone,
And the saints
And the pews and the pulpit
Are aligned.

Here, this spot, where millions
Of minds, or
Slippery-defined souls at least
Have felt

An elusive something, or someone,
Or a force
Which some call love
Or God,

Or both; even those people,
Disbelievers
Or unbelievers, no matter,
Feel it.

It is in Westminster Abbey.
You know it
Maybe from a dream, or a friend,
or instinct.

Below this spot were once steps
Now bricked over
And forgotten, by design
Or awe.

If these stairs were uncovered
You would see
They descend into a darkness
Strange-hold.

At the bottom of twenty-eight
Or a thousand
Stairs is a bricked-up
Door, heft-hewn.

Nobody has dared to descend
Since Gaudi or
Before him Blake, and
John of Patmos.

They knew that the Abbey
Was not built
On this spot accidentally.
They felt it.

It drove men mad; souls, too.
The truth is
That the abbey grew
From this spot.

Behind that door lies a catacomb
Where no dust
Has ever settled or flown
In light.

It is the Form of darkness:
Plato was right.
Impenetrable by man
Or soul.

Nonetheless, inside this crypt
Is another room
And inside that, a lead box
and another.

Even in this unsettling nothing
A force plays
Inside that sealed box:
Man’s best.

If that box, in the box, in the room,
In the crypt,
Behind the bricked-up door
Down stairs

Underneath the bricks and marble
Under the feet
In a particular spot where people stop
In the Abbey

Was opened, it would yield this:
A photograph.
Of a sweeping wing, metallic
And mathematic

And organic but clearly
Not from Earth
Or of earth, for that matter.
Blue, red:

More Forms. The essence of blue
And of red
The very essence of a wing
Perfection.

A photograph. A portal
Into another place
Which bleeds its power into
This place.

A place. A vibration. A dimension.
These concepts are
Not sufficient. It is alive;
Or life.

A human mind, or soul, can always
Rationalise
And creative geniuses on two feet
Are happy

To speculate: some call it God, aliens, infinity:
George Lucas
Saw it in a dream and made movies
About it

Spielberg and Kubrick too were touched
By a half-
Remembered glimpse of a vision in
A dream.

Joseph Smith so wanted to believe
In a rumour
That he went mad in a forest and created
More words.

Governments covered its existence up
So well that
There once existd a Ministry of Silence
That has

Been so effective at burying the portal-photo
In shreds of
Paperwork, obsolete hard drives, forgotten passwords
And Freemasonry

That the Ministry itself forgot what
Its use was
And shut itself down in a frenzy of
Cost-efficiency.

DaVinci maybe knew of its existence
And was wise
To steer clear: he reckoned that this
Photo-portal

Was a way to unlimited power, technology
And all that.
But he believed in human ingenuity
Too much

To want to take short cuts.
In any case
To gaze into the sun is to
Go blind.

So above this spot in an Abbey
Which grew from
The leaking power of a portal, maybe more,
Or less

Than what some people call Heaven,
Valhalla,
Another level of consciousness, and
So on,

A million feet pass, stopping to shiver
With happy awe
At the makings of man and the offerings
To infinity.

Armies fight. Battles are won. Wars are lost.
People are killed.
Governments rise. Money is spent,
People die.

Some are richer than others. The richest
Of them all
Are those who know wealth
Is within.

In the meantime, people go to work
To buy things
To try and achieve something that is
Always and

Tragicomically out of reach. It is
As useless
As trying to halt the spin of
The Earth

And each soul or mind fundamentally
Knows of this.
For the longer the portal is buried
Down there

The more of its power or compelling nature
Leaks through and
Into our world. The more we forget it is
Down there

The more shocking-special its effects
Will be when
Or if. Or how. Or by whom it
Is released.

For one day, there will be restoration.
No matter that
This place is not from the hand
Of man;

Man is good at building and rebuilding
And compelled
Always so to do. And one day
Therefore

The tiles will be jemmied. The steps discovered
The door seen
And unbricked. The catacomb lit by flame or laser
To reveal

In a room, within which is merely a box
In a box:
A photo, or a portal, with a picture
Of a wing.

And all who gaze on it will recall the history
Of mankind
Will be imbued with the death and magic
And love

Of a million generations. This is the truth
Of the portal.
And the next day, or the same day,
People arrive

To weld the box shut. To encase it in plastics
And to build
New rooms within rooms
Bricked up

Stairs filled in with concrete and clay
Forever, or
As long as the folk memory of the tales
Of those

Who once gazed on this picture or portal
To somewhere
Remain as echoes in the tangled forest
Of human

Thought. And then a million more feet,
Some human,
Will pass above this forgotten spot: not knowing why,
They will

Stop.







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