Lay for the Day 3rd October

1226: St Francis of Assisi dies, at the age of about 45. Because of his passionate love for fellow creatures – to the point that he could even call the diseases that tormented his final years his “sisters” – he is a patron and protector of all animals. But he is particularly associated with birds, because of the legend of his preaching the Gospel to them, as depicted in a fresco in Assisi’s magnificent basilica, built above his tomb. Perhaps this legend began as an alibi for Francis’s breach of Church law: he spoke about Christ’s love in public places, to anyone who would listen, and the Church forbade preaching by laymen, i.e. by those whom it had not licensed.

Each section-title of the poem below gives a clue to the bird depicted in it. The second part of the sequence appears on 4th October, and the third on 16th October.

Philosophers of the Window part 1

B--------

One more heard than seen
now in the dead hours
begins to sing.
His shape is a deep, clean
slot of black
in the grey blush that passes
for night,
and a spring uncoiling his flight.
Nil-
nil, he says: from nothing I was born
[hollow
half-sphere, that eddy of old wisps
where blindly
he squealed behind the drainpipe];
briefly I burn,
and to nought shall return;
and still the summer
comes for me to score.
This one sees hope in the absence of light.

C---

These big eye see
yes green tree,
blue sky flow
in one no:

tilt
as they smelt
such weak-
ness as they seek.

A croak-
told joke
and after
p itch-empty laughter.

A lurching strut
and then the flut-
tering of weathered-
leather-feathered

wings. Undone boot,
upripped root,
blot of oil
unto-death loyal.

A raw hole bored
through the whole word,
a black gap
under a flap.

John Gibbens

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar