The Sunrise Liturgy. Mia Anderson

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      (Cranmer’s 16th century take on Paul of the Book).

      You mean really? You mean do?

      As a race, we have a pretty clear notion of where

      one skin stops and another begins. We’re good at boundaries.

      We could push the chick from the nest — we’re

      the favoured chick.

      My pain is not yours, and vice versa.

      At least we live as if that’s what we thought.

      But the pelican of Christology and legend, that’s

      a horse of another feather.

      Someone called it

      ‘absolute donation’.

      What if

      drawing your own blood to feed others

      blood donorship in clinical quiverfuls of mystic syringes

      what if sheer cliff-edge generosity

      absolute donation

      were the bull’s-eye of every post-communion prayer? For real?

      I think we might lose our sense of skin, of whose pain is whose,

      of where

      the edge of the nest is.

      That would be novel.

      We might feel the pain of the Congo.

      Or would that be asking

      more than we’re up for?

      Riverbreath

      Before there’s light, there’s a wall of black halfway up the sky

      glooming as if a distant storm-cloud

      had rolled in

      or been rolled out

      then lodged

      on top of the far shore.

      Or had it made it that far? Or both far and away beyond?

      Who was to know.

      There was no light to see by

      just black on black.

      Would something crash soon, something break or burst —

      down or forth or out?

      Who knew.

      Sleep rolled around.

      Closer to dawn, a windowful of blank, etched on by naked trees :

      dance still as still life, nature morte. The blank : full

      so full the foghorns must sound,

      the coast guard and freighter invisible in the breath of the river.

      The riverbreath had begun to precipitate out at first on the

      topmost branches

      the fingers in this still dance

      fitting the tips before lightfall with gloves as light as breath

      divinable if doubtable;

      but now

      while the sun’s own foghorn ooooo’d its retinal signal of potential

      to our intimations of sunrise and

      the Imminence

      began to burnish the backside of the grey,

      the mist

      emboldened

      feathered the fingers further with fur, rime no longer doubtable

      no less than

      visible and risible now

      on the poised dancers, whose dance is… in this

      retina skittering over their limbs.

      The sleep of night rolls over,

      likes the feel,

      rolls again

      rolls the riverbreath round like cud in its mouth

      intestinefuls of cud that stretch out the length of the riverrun seaward

      rolling, rolling

      curling like unwound cud downstream

      chew-chew! le train-train of rivering dawn mist

      fed by imminent sun

      you think I’m joking? fanciful? I say it like I see it.

      Now immanent sun’s sunning up the -rise

      risible and visible

      and the riverbreath coating the mirror, haa-haaaing on the

      mirror of us, shoreline, and us, riverains

      all the breath’s neighbours and all the breath’s men

      on whom the precipitate of river falls like… a baptism

      a condensation of dawn. The Sun Effect :

      blessed, graced, manna’d, this white fallout, this alter-precipitate

      of light with voice like a foghorn,

      herald of the down train.

      Tin coin of sun

      having mustered the wattage to burn through the grey

      is gold sovereign now at break of day

      and about its business of doubling and redoubling the helix of

      mist twisting downstream

      towards town and gown, master of ceremonies of this

      mystic parade

      of evaporating banners

      lord of the ephemeral

      His Eminence

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