T. S. Eliot at Norwich, 1942

Swirl and riddle beyond the gray wall
Where she was anchored, an old church,
A labyrinth of vines and dragonflies now,
Maze of thistles overtaking enclosures,
Crevices and crenellations of vegetation,
Tufts of grass piercing hermitage
And cloistered cell. Her every choice
Renunciation, her fame transcendent.

A river ripples against a bank,
Her wisdom flooding the years so we,
In our desolate century, imprisoned
And starved for sanctity, encounter
Her visions and devotion, how she assigned
No blame for sin, let shine as sterling
God’s love of all who came to call
And lingered near the water’s edge.

From such inhabitude of solitude
She spoke a truth as only sages can,
Knowing the heart’s most secret cries.
A red candle now praises yellowed stone,
Flames to comfort the frightened spirit,
Hearing again the gunners near the coast,
Picturing in this pastoral place
The London fires, the missile’s shrill voice.

Rank smell of mussels from the river,
The dark, cold, empty desolation
Of those vast waters not far
From where she walked. Leper houses
Once clustered about these church walls,
Embraced the town gates. The rattle
Of warning clappers stirs in imagination:
Through the small squint, the narrow

Space at ground where those accursed
Were fed the holy word, the Lord
As blessed bread—that part Julian chose,
A garden enclosure like the soul
Awash in God’s emboldening love.
Now a crumbling grindstone, smoky glass
Lie amid old elms and fallen timbers.
Yet all manner of thing shall be well.

I saved her words for the last Quartet,
The final movement in symphonic work,
Casting the soul’s pilgrimage in verse
To quiver like spring on earth, alive
And beating, discharging all, myself no less,
From sin and error—or so I hoped.
I thought the Greeks my masters once,
Struck redemptive gold in sacrament.

What do we know of her in that small cell
At window where she heard some confess
To crimes they dared not tell the priest?
Nourishment on desolate nights, her life
A bended knee embraced by words
Transcending place, this very poem.
A gray figure offering sense for dreams,
The correlation of journey and loss.

Autumn afternoon, secluded chapel,
Half ruins now, scaffolding for thoughts
Echoing in my heart, quick as the fire
Of grace. Here a bronze crucifix twisted
By heat, a scent of apples, shocked grain,
Perhaps an end and a beginning,
The cycles spinning, the slate of years
Unchanged in rural places beyond these
walls.

— Stella Nesanovich*

_{* Stella Nesanovich’s “T.S. Eliot at Norwich, 1942” is reprinted with permission from >The Anglican, Volume
35 (January 2006).}