A KIND OF BEAUTY

For fifty years I rattled hollow
Cans for coin and fame.
I guzzled feeble compliments
(And stomached endless shame).

I savoured hoary platitudes
And lapped up lite-milk praise,
Till sozzled by vainglorious 
Esteem, I sunk my gaze

Into the depths – all empty!
Bereft of joy tossed in, 
As if my childhood innocence
Had leaked through rusting tin.

So, cold, exposed and broken
Like a freshly turned sod,
I stared up at the star-bright clouds –
An insult to my God –

And crumpling cried: “Where should I turn?
– How shall I face the rest
Of my remaining years as tears
Fast tumble down my chest?”

The old illusions cracked like chalk,
I fell into the gutter,
Where tired flesh and tainted souls
Can hardly hear you mutter,

And lay for an eternity,
It seemed … when in my ear
A sudden rush of angels’ wings
Came flurrying near.  

No sooner had their fluttering ceased
Then gliding through the door
I saw their sunlit, sainted forms
Process across the floor.

The hidden half of history – 
That reared me with scant thanks,
That boiled the kettle, buttered bread,
With nought stored in the banks;

Not feted on a sandstone plinth,
Bestriding no great town,
But baking cream-filled angel cakes
When life had worn me down.

They brought what riches cannot buy,
Told tales to set me free,
And loved with no expiry date
– Life’s sweetest victory. 

It was my blinding moment,
Cave encounter, road reveal;
My Magdalene, my Damascene,
The deal to end ordeal.

And though to dust I had returned,
They gave no clamorous call
To “try again, fail better”, 
Only bend and deeper fall

Into the squelching mud and send
A shoot out like a spark,
And grow, as though blindfolded,
By truth’s light, twined with the dark.

And stronger grow, and wider still; 
For all of it’s an art – 
To build a fortress webbed with love
In tendrils from the heart.