Today is Day 591 of the daily poems, and we begin our new theme of The Sacred. Our poet Fiona Clark reflects the wonder that is the hammerbeam roof at St Mary’s church on Honey Hill, in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
Angel ceiling
St Mary’s Church, Bury St Edmunds.
Celestial music –
we’ve heard it spilling from the angel ceiling
where they glide in silent wooden glory
and carapace of cobwebs. The master carpenter
carved heavenly smiles on eleven pairs
of human faces, each mirrored by another,
across the arching hammerbeam roof, processing
ever onwards to the high altar. ‘Boat boys’ carry
their coracles of incense, one whose broken hand
lies below in a glass coffin, Snow White fashion
pointing us forever upwards. To each pair
an appointed task. This angel – Hugh, perhaps,
in life – round-faced, bubbling with inner laughter,
swings a thurible. Among the cloud of frankincense,
John, more delicate and serious,
ponders intellectual pleasures deeply,
measures the rhythm with a steady hand.
Agnes, seeming meek as a lamb, is masquerading
as a boy, to gain her rightful place before her twin.
The taperers’ faces glow in flickering candle beams,
while Gabriel glimmers in full body growth of
rainbow feathers. A young Queen carries
her own crown. All round sprout demi-angels,
mermaids, woodwose, wolves, herons, bitterns,
voles and eagles, fishes, flowers, ferns
and wolfhounds. And the silent music spills
down over us. High, so high they are –
above the clerestory, where Reformation
could not touch them. We lie on our backs
on wooden pews, peering up at them through
our binoculars, while they gaze down
at our prone effigies with mild amusement.
Fiona Clark