The Reverend Slope

“In the gloom of the temples there are lights here and there.”

~R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Summer-Autumn, vol. 3, 279

For Donald who became a Roman Catholic

Across millennia the temples span

Our darkness.  They are best when they are grim.

Caves decorated both by paint and man

Are eldest of the ignorance.  Their dim

Perceptions, elegant in shaman’s mind,

Are spread in ashes, ochres, highest art

Across the ceilings and the walls as blind

Though seeing superstition at the start

Of men’s religion, painting, utter, right,

More right than gods and Christ, correct and true,

More right than paint Picasso in his night

Of Modernism ever could construe.

  The shrines with pillars or a Gothic nave

    Are mainly degradations of the cave.

©  Phillip Whidden