Postscript: at the ruins of St Mary on the Rocks, St Andrews

From Caledonian Postcards

Was it just legal fiction brought us here?
The battery
Is silent on the question, gone cold for fear
They’d wake the dead. They won’t but you know me—
A “ruin bibber,” unreformed, Romantic.
The morning’s clear, if cold. I sit in choir,
Intone a requiem in foreign diction.
Communed with gulls, asperged by the Atlantic,
Would that I sang with Pentecostal fire.
My teeth are flint and steel. My breath is friction.


Dan Rattelle

Dan Rattelle's poetry and criticism has been published or is forthcoming in First Things, Modern Age, Crisis, Catholic World Report, Alabama Literary Review and elsewhere. He is a graduate student at the University of St Andrews. Follow him @Drattelle.


'Postscript: at the ruins of St Mary on the Rocks, St Andrews' has 1 comment

  1. February 18, 2020 @ 5:54 am Cynthia Erlandson

    Beautiful rhymes and rhyme scheme!

    Reply


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