Within the cloisters of Durham Cathedral

The pillars raise the choir’s song,

Each mortar’s grain carries it aloft

Till it builds and fades with the final gong

Of the evening bells and the incense waft, 

Within these walls inviolably strong

That imprison God from the noisy throng

Of people by hoary steeple dwarfed.

I sit alone in a nook and feel

Colossal arches oblivious to time

Belittle worries and scoff my mind

Brimming with words restless to bind

A giant emptiness lone sublime.

With inverted smiles my lines they steal,

Bereaved I watch the choristers kneel

‘Fore an empty altar, a golden rood.

Few scattered men doze on the bench

Intoxicated by an ambient ghost

Of a weary life in death engrossed

From which their souls they cannot wrench;

Exhausted their minds in numbness brood