Flowing from God's fingertips,
music metamorphoses to rain,
the notes condensing, pale as tulle
as they descend through cloud,
or fusing in translucent chains,
pellucid promise of renewal,
earth baptised again
in vernal sacrament…
An arbour like a cupola,
its frame entwined with clematis,
arches above lovers
as they consecrate
their nuptial kiss…
Reminiscent of the wedding-bower
waits the perfumed bier,
adorned with lilies
and white roses for the Epitaphios
as, shoulder high, the effigy of Christ
is carried from the church
amid the scent of myrrh, the dirge,
the vaporising fumes of wax…
The rain of grief flows heavenward
as God redeems earth's freight of loss,
chains of notes from aching throats
returning to His fingertips…
We stand beneath a fragrant canopy
invisible as air, where incense
crumbles into ash, and bridal veils
form winding-cloths,
where rosewater and violins
dissolve in vitriol,
and, in an instant, pomegranates
mutate to grenades…
And yet we make these affirmations
in the livid face of danger,
loving more intensely in defiance of the odds,
knowing that the levy ecstasy exacts
is mortal pain… because the jasmine
and the stars both speak to us
in heaven's name, and no umbra
devised by man can touch those
in the hands of God…