COPTIC CHURCH

How far beyond the homes of sense
rears up this primitive pretence
of a transcendent flesh (whose birth
was from the centric monolith).
We bow the lintel of our head
to written lintels of the dead,
pictorial inmates of a room
cut in the frozen curl of time:
respecting older than belief
our greater ignorance of life.
Nor any faith beyond the brain
is more than a dark love of man.

So built within this frame of Christ
are stones of a remoter past:
the blazoned myth of Horus lies
within these faded images
where glowed Mithraic pigment in
the Thracian monks' symbolic line;
the spirit of this place is all
the dust of worship in the wall,
the worship of ourselves in God,
the blood's dark instinct from the dead,
whose memory of magnificence
reared up this primitive pretence.
				MUSTURRUD.