The Parsonage

For R.S. Thomas

Even here the priest must hold our horror
in his hands, and

press it to his lips, gentle,

to surrender its shock, and drain the freight
glow and gloss of

the body’s bent light,

while the land grays, and long green rolls of field
and bone elide

between twin silences.

“See how he loved him!” And see that the news
is delivered quickly.

Unless God intervene

to prevent the prayer that fit him to time, storms
which we always

feared would arrive will do so,

tumbling like broken glass across an empty moor,
the priestly cry,

suddenly brittle beyond all repair.

About Travis Wright

Travis Wright's poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Quarterly, Dappled Things, Ekstasis, and Anthropocene, among others, and have been recently anthologized by Little Gidding Press. He lives in Cambridge (UK) with his wife and children, where he is finishing a PhD.