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by
Rowan Williams
To
the City
1.
Bosphorus
Once
there were chains between the towers
shackling
the green-black forest walls across the water
locked
in each other's mirror-gaze, chains to choke off
the
galleys headed greedily for the tense city. Not now:
this
is a motorway shining with oil, the lanes
jostling
and humming with their relaxed freight,
birthdays
and anniversaries and conference excursions
bouncing
and rocking along the cleft so confidently
you
could forget the swimmers dead in the green-black
depths,
the ones who failed to breach the walls
on
the far shore or break the mirror. And the day trips
swing
round and land where they began. But in the unquiet
morning
dazzle, the dolphins arch and plunge, unannounced,
bright
needles pulling threads between air
and
sea. They stitch their trails round the lethal cruisers,
the
crates of oil and spinning blades, come without call
or
cause, go without mercy. Out of the green-black vaults
the
thread leaps, wavering in unquiet light,
to
tow the boats out of their channels, craw
short
to shore, face to face, swimmers to gulls and sailors.
2.
Ayia Sofia
And
that, the Greeks tell you, is the Conqueror's black handprint,
when
he rode in over the ten-foot depth
of
corpses; when he leaned over, pushing
the
half-globe on its axis, swinging the arrow
towards
a new, south-eastern pole. The bars of light
lie
angled silently, rolling against the tilted bell:
a
tongue's thread cut. The foliage of immense
words
painted curling and waving, unmown
green
verges of a scoured field, drifts across open mouths
and
scratched eyes, the layered dead
under
the flaring frozen seraphs. There are no hours
to
strike, no consecrating whisper to be marked, where death
so
rolls and stacks its fields. Handprints of soot
inside
the burnt domes of skulls; the empty segment
on
the sundial, where worlds have pulled apart
and
shadows stand unmoved, the clock's hands
are
nailed still, the bell cracks open to a sky
of
frozen stars pointed in accusation,
flaring
on spikes, burning for the uncountable names
harvested
by conquerors for this or that revelation's sake.
3.
Phanar; the Patriarch's Cantor
Anastas.
Leaning back, lifting elbows, braced,
jaw
out, he curls fingers and lips, to make
his
brassy diaphragm a bowl where the round gale
swings
on itself, brushed the metal to a shine. Fingers
unfold
into the quieter pulsing of a sandy breeze;
the
drone shifts with a grind, brows are wiped,
a
tired eight-year-old begins to cry, is hugged,
scolded,
bundled behind the screen. The wind
starts
rising once again, the couriers pick up speed
and
ride into the gaping caves, the lifting wind
scrapes
sandy flanks against the bowl of lung, sinus,
damp
and bone. What does it carry, the straining
weight
searing his arms against the stall's wood?
The
creak of stones shifting on the hill; forests falling; a body,
massive,
limp, released from its ropes around the mast,
struck
dumb? The windy grains ringing half-audibly,
bouncing
around the bowl's rim? He lifts
his
palms again; welcomes the rising, the stone,
the
grain, the body, the little pestle
drawn
round the bronze. Anastas. Lifted.
From Rowan Williams, The Other Mountain, 2014.
