Day 606 of the daily poems: our poet Colin Pink casts a cool eye at the phenomenon of sacred relics: fabricated, dreary, absurd, cradling the intangible.
Relics’ Requiem
Behind glass, resting now, as after a long
journey, putting their feet up, the relics
are checked-in to the cathedral treasury
like so many tourists in a mid-range hotel.
Formerly they were carted from place to place
like family heirlooms, by monks and priests,
stolen like silver or gold credit cards to heaven
by pilgrims, invaders and rival orders. What
is that absurd need to eff the ineffable that
drives us mad? Here it is: masquerading
as fragments of bone; vials of dried blood;
foreskins. How dreary they look shucked
from their shells: dirt under ancient finger
nails; the itchy aroma of dust; the shrivelled
skin of hope, dry and wrinkled as a face
whose beauty has been capsized by time.
The relics keep their secrets, snigger at our
confidence in the capacity of the intangible,
Laugh Out Loud at our longing for the
numinous to blunt the blade of the real.
Colin Pink
from Colin Pink Typicity, published by Dempsey & Windle 2021