She is the author of several poetry collections including, A Game of Soldiers, Lucifer at the Fair and What To Do With Your Poems. Her New and Selected poems, entitled Lucifer, with Angels (Dedalus) appeared in 1994. I first encountered her work in The Lion Book of Christian Poetry (1981) which was reproduced by Eerdmans in the United States.
Death on a Crossing
What he never thought to consider was whether
the thing was true. What bewildered him, mostly,
was the way that the rumours had of reaching him
from such improbable sources — illiterate pamphlets
pressed in his hand, the brash or the floundering stranger
who came to his door, the proclamations, among
so many others, on hoardings
--------------------------------------though sometimes waking
a brief dismay, that never quite prodded him
to the analyst’s couch.
-----------------------------But annunciations, he thought,
should come to a rational man in a rational way.
He walked between a skyful of midnight angels
and a patch on somebody’s jeans, both saying
the same things to his stopped ears
----------------------------------------------till the day
when he stepped on a crossing with not enough conviction
to get him safe to the other side, and he lay
among strangers’ feet, and the angels lowered their trumpets
and no sweet chariot swung, to carry him home.
This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Evangeline Paterson: second post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.
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