Poem: ‘Apostasy’
John Burnside, 12 May 2022
Psalm 139:23
At one time,when there might have been a God,everything vaguelyconvent, dovesand serpents in the Treeof Knowledge, gospelwhispered down the galleriesof rain,
I would have been awake for almostnothing in this perishable world,only a drift of rose, or cardamine,along the backroad home, wind in the trees,the angel half-revealed, improbable,lighting the hedge like a flamein the greenof...