Chapel statue

'Chapel statue' by Rosemary Mathew

Here on a cool, curled, college wall I stand
between my fellows and above the world,
a still stone figure on a pedestal,   
with a curved, carved canopy sheltering my head.     
Though lifted aloft from the earth, I am              
still much less high than heaven,
for my eyes’ fixed focus ever stares
steady and steadfast, at the glorious gold
and red robes of the saints and prophets
who people the ceiling, there
on the vaulted dome yet further up.

I have a lifetime stood immobile here,
year after hour, hour after year,
watching the early winter sunsets
and the late dusks of summer, when the day
drains slowly away
through the painted glass behind me,
and the sole source of light shrinks
to the lamps’ thin points that gleam within.

Then with my closed stone ears I hear it said
that outside is ‘the world’ – another place,
moving and strange; and I would like to go
and see the people and the wonders there,
to learn what makes the noise so loud each day,
swelling and sinking, rattling and rumbling,
so bright and rhythmic, growing from dawn
to bright discordant bustle,
ebbing with night to quiet, dull
peace again.

Yet I am fearful lest that world be full
of envy, malice, spite and selfishness,
murder and mayhem, moneylust, mistrust,
deceit, dishonesty, disease and pain,
treachery, war, abandonment and sorrow.

Then am I glad I cannot move,
for so much rampant folly
would surely strike my stone soul cold,
even in this stone body;
and I would lose those treasure moments when
pure, fragile singing floats up clear to me;
voices in harmonies so sweet they pierce my frozen spirit,
and my marble heart longs
that it could be beating, and would break.

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