“Unison” by F.R. Scott

 

Signature by F.R. Scott, Klanak Press, Vancouver, 1964

What is it makes a church so like a poem?

The inner silence -- space between words?

The ancient pews set out in rhyming rows

Where old men sit and lovers are so still?

Or something just beyond that can't be seen,

Yet seems to move if we should look away?

It is not in the choir and the priest.

It is the empty church has most to say.

It cannot be the structure of the stone.

Sometimes mute buildings rise above a church.

Nor is it just the reason it was built.

Often it does not not speak at all.

Men have done murders here as in a street,

And blinded men have smashed a holy place.

Men will walk by a church and never know

What lies within, as men will scorn a book.

Then surely it is not the church itself

That makes a church so very like a poem,

But only that unfolding of the heart

That lifts us upward in a blaze of light

And turns a nave of stone or page of words

To Holy, Holy, Holy without end.