The White Silhouette by James Harpur

Author:James Harpur [James Harpur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784105839
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The British Library silence,

Trappist looks and gestures;

roof windows filter sunlight

on desks, books, researchers,

the quiet order of shelves;

the readers on a pilgrimage

to fill the absence in their lives

with a word, line or page.

And every head is crowned

by an aura of desk-lamp gold,

turning the chamber into how

I picture the mind of God,

or De Chardin’s ‘noosphere’,

in which pure consciousness

from those who have evolved

over aeons, streams forth

as ribbons of light converging

in the knot of the omega point.

The library in the afternoon;

researchers lingering at lunch

in Bloomsbury or St Pancras,

where the first leaves of autumn

are dropping in the squares

and patterning the pavements.

I turn a page of Kells:

Jesus stands on the temple

below a hovering of angels

and dominates the centre –

the halo of a claret sun

behind his tumbling golden curls –

as he shelters his brethren

from enticements of the devil,

who’s soot-dipped, scrawny-small,

a fly flattened on the vellum,

repeating ad nauseam

Si filius dei es, mitte te hinc deorsum

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