I never was
much of a Christian
even in Sunday school
(the brothers Robertson
praised Jesus for us all)
but now the old gray granite
Episcopal church
on Monument Road
where the town's last elms
shine glassily as ice
in the wintry sunrise
rings its silver carillon
so cheerily and well
I blink, dismayed,
my blithe irreverence awry,
think of the new black Bible
with my name stamped in gold.
the old upright piano
and my father singing,
the stained-glass lamb and dove,
the lilies at the altar,
and, before the bread and grape juice,
the Reverend Van Horn's
vague, insistent prayer
for penetential dawn,
and, idling at the traffic light,
I praise not Jesus
but the nagging symbols
cast before me here
under the icy elms,
where the old stone church
lifts its squat tower
so doggedly to God,
shakes me so severely
with a sudden iron bell,
that I, a disbeliever,
almost become again
the pale, distracted boy
who bided and believed
in the vast incarnate miracle
of all that was, is, and shall be ever.
Donald W. Baker H'57
from The Readiness: Poems from the Cape