All seems the same. Different kneeling people
move their lips before the glimmering lamp,
but nothing else has changed within the chapel.
No one disturbs the different dozing tramp.
Still from the apse behind the altar table
a Sacred Heart awaits the perfect prayer.
The same dark shapes among mosaic and marble,
worn and weary, lonely, in despair,
enjoy a moment’s charity within
familiar shadows, murmur their confessions,
genuflect, absolved of that week’s sin,
then disappear in different directions.
Yet fifty years have passed. Victoria Street
rumbles on outside. Inside, he’s old,
but recollects where changed and changeless meet:
the time and place to cleanse a sullied soul.
Martin Briggs is the son of an English Methodist minister, but has been exposed to and influenced by Catholic thinking and culture all his life. He began writing seriously after retiring from a career in public administration, since when his work has appeared in Areopagus, The Dawntreader and Reach Poetry. He lives with his wife in Suffolk, England.