Poem
Pauline Stainer
Crossing the Snow-line
Crossing the Snow-line
Crossing the Snow-line
I still see them –the sculptors of Kilpeck
on the road
to Santiago de Compostela,
crossing the Roman bridge
in the small hours
westward,
always westward,
Finisterre referring
its azure,
the jubilation of wolves
spilling into the cloister.
But some
never made it back
through the wilderness
to chisel
a sleeping Christ
from the living tree
and lie fallow
under their larch ceiling
as if amazed
by the irrepressible light
at the burial of the stars.
© 2008, Pauline Stainer
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
Pauline Stainer
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1941)
Pauline Stainer has always worked outside the metropolitan poetry community. Yet she won first prize in the Stroud Festival poetry competition in 1984, and has won major awards in several other competitions, including the TLS and the King’\'s Lynn, Cheltenham, Leek, Hastings and York festival competitions. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1987, and came to wider notice with her quiet...
Poems
Poems of Pauline Stainer
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Crossing the Snow-line
I still see them –the sculptors of Kilpeck
on the road
to Santiago de Compostela,
crossing the Roman bridge
in the small hours
westward,
always westward,
Finisterre referring
its azure,
the jubilation of wolves
spilling into the cloister.
But some
never made it back
through the wilderness
to chisel
a sleeping Christ
from the living tree
and lie fallow
under their larch ceiling
as if amazed
by the irrepressible light
at the burial of the stars.
From: Crossing the Snowline
Crossing the Snow-line
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