This is my return to the submissions list after seven months of travel, during which I was often either incommunicado, or almost so. Technical wizardry does not always work as advertised. I do not seem to be able to suppress my historical bent.

 

Lincoln Triptych

 

Part One: Defiance

 

A land made soft

by Heaven's tears, cried

thru' blankets hung aloft.

 

Some ask with sighs:

“What ties us to this benighted place?”

Many crane their necks to watch the skies

 

as tempests rage – then with grace

deny the perils of better climes:

the city may seldom feel the mace,

 

but listen when the high clock chimes

the hours - the cathedral's peal

reminds them of her early times.

 

A thousand years of faith to heal

ancient ravages on its sentinel hill,

to stand alert, and not to kneel;

 

guardians defiant, calm and still,

as great wars roiled and raged

to test its aged will …

 

…and endured. Walls that caged

Lincoln’s pious commune

withstood vain warriors, were not razed.

 

She lives yet, gargantuan silhouette

under a summer moon,

while tourists, selfie-sticks in hand,

shiver slightly in the flaring light of June.

 

Part two: Pilgrim

 

Music sings in quiet corners,

repeats herself in the silvern night

‘till the bleaching shadows order

 

flights of memories, vague and bright,

but always in a minor key,

not to outshine their emerging light.

 

A lullaby floats along a Lincoln spinney,

soulful as sea-mist adrift at dawn,

to soothe summer’s smallest misery.

 

Now a girl grown strong, a wild cimarron,

wanders far as her world recedes

to the beat of tympans; to herself withdrawn.

 

As a woman no wiser she still believes

that happiness grows thru’ a heart of ice,

but her soul is frozen, her ego grieves.

 

In middle age she has paid the price;

now her music is Saint Matthew Passion,

her humour a grain of Bach's paradise,

 

but the chills of autumn soon will turn

the Pilgrim from her walking shoes,

the hermit from her mountain top,

the music from her muse.

 

Part Three: Two Temples

 

One an act of simple duty, the other

a triumph of the mason’s art,

walk in sunshine, like sister and brother;

 

each the whole, each one a part

of the vault of humanity, rising

to meet the evil Chaplin’s heart;

 

the steady eyes of flyers apprising

two temples built of courage and faith,

their bombers soaring, dark angels flying

 

over graven-imaged cathedral wraiths,

surveying Lincoln’s stoic mourners

‘til, alighting on England’s honoured earth

 

they breathe again its English airs,

listen, silent, for their comrades’ return,

while staring once more at empty chairs.

 

Chris Hubbard

Hemingby, 2017