← “Way up there in the poison glen…”
“Look, I must have a star on my door…” →

“Slipping the clippers through the telephone wires…”

Cathedral visitors are sometimes confused, even offended, by gargoyles that honor irreverence or depict blatant evil. The suicidal, Gollum-like “Stabber” on the west front isn’t surprised; he knows what he is.

ALL HALLOWS’ EVE

Long live the weeds and the wilderness—yet
What would be left of the wildness and wet
Were it not for the curdle, the canker, the theft
That threaten to render the blessèd bereft?

Our beady-boned eyebulge flits over the burn;
Wily we twitch through the sack-shriveled fern
As the groin-growls enrage us where daggers bite through,
Damning the bloodline that dapples the dew.

Yet rounded in couplets, despair-darksome sneering,
Frown pitchblack poets defy all our leering,
Twindled revisioners burbling like broth,
Donning their Jesuit wind-shriven cloth.

What pumpkin-maws mumble, we ache to express;
Ghouls plunder verses they dare not possess.
Take heed of the unhallowed eyeblight you mourn:
Then know why the saints of the morning were born.


(For all the entries in this series, hit the “looking up” tab.)

Sunday, October 31, 2010, 12:01 am in gargoyles/grotesques, looking up, National Cathedral | 2 Comments »

2 responses to “Slipping the clippers through the telephone wires…”

  1. # 1 - Sheri Blume wrote:
    Sunday, October 31, 2010, at 2:00 pm

    Brilliant!

  2. # 2 - Chris Matarazzo wrote:
    Friday, October 28, 2011, at 1:48 pm

    Love it. I’m being lazy and not looking — but have these all been in alliterative verse? This is the first I’ve noticed it. Anyway, I love the sinew of your gargoyle poems — they feel old, like their speakers and their speakers’ legendary heritage. Great stuff.

Leave a comment:

(Comments with links may be held briefly for moderation.)

  • Quid plura?

    "Quid plura?" is the blog of Jeff Sypeck, a writer in the Maryland woods.

  • Becoming Charlemagne is available as a Harper Perennial paperback. Order a copy here.

  • cover
  • Looking Up: Poems from the National Cathedral Gargoyles is now available! Order a copy from Amazon or learn more here.

  • cover
  • Folklore! Chivalry! Mad alliteration! The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier: A Translation is available in paperback and as a Kindle e-book.

  • cover
  • The Beallsville Calendar is a yearlong alliterative poem about moving from the city to the country. Learn more about it or order a copy here.

  • cover
  • Search ten years of “Quid Plura?” here:

  • Categories

    • academic ax-grinding (13)
    • African Americans (8)
    • Amit Majmudar (1)
    • Appalachian Trail (3)
    • applied paleobromatology (8)
    • Arthuriana (15)
    • Balkans (7)
    • Beallsville Calendar (15)
    • Benton MacKaye (1)
    • Beowulf (11)
    • Best of 2007 (1)
    • Best of 2008 (1)
    • Best of 2009 (1)
    • Best of 2010 (1)
    • Best of 2011 (1)
    • Best of 2012 (1)
    • Best of 2013 (1)
    • Best of 2014 (1)
    • Best of 2015 (1)
    • Best of 2016 (1)
    • Best of 2017 (1)
    • Best of 2018 (1)
    • Best of the First Five Years (1)
    • Best of the First Ten Years (1)
    • bookstores (4)
    • Bulgaria (1)
    • Byzantium (2)
    • California (1)
    • Caucasus (4)
    • Celticism (1)
    • Charlemagne (52)
    • Chaucer (12)
    • Civil War (3)
    • Colorado (2)
    • Dante (5)
    • Delaware (5)
    • England (12)
    • epic poems (23)
    • F. Scott Fitzgerald (4)
    • Fenton Johnson (1)
    • Flannery O'Connor (2)
    • France (8)
    • galangal (2)
    • gardening (8)
    • gardens (1)
    • gargoyles/grotesques (75)
    • George Alfred Townsend (1)
    • Georgia (6)
    • Germany (6)
    • Iceland (23)
    • Iowa (3)
    • Ireland (4)
    • Joan of Arc (6)
    • John Pendleton Kennedy (2)
    • Kansas (1)
    • literature (110)
    • Lloyd Alexander (31)
    • Longfellow (2)
    • looking up (61)
    • Louisiana (19)
    • Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (1)
    • Mark Twain (2)
    • Maryland (32)
    • Massachusetts (1)
    • medieval shark week (1)
    • medievalism (181)
    • Merovingians (1)
    • Minnesota (3)
    • miscellaneous (118)
    • Missouri (1)
    • National Cathedral (75)
    • New Jersey (20)
    • New York (10)
    • Old English (19)
    • Pennsylvania (2)
    • philanthropy (3)
    • philology (8)
    • Poland (1)
    • Polaroid Land Camera (4)
    • politics (22)
    • Rome (1)
    • Russia (2)
    • Scandinavia (3)
    • Scotland (3)
    • SF/fantasy (23)
    • Shakespeare (3)
    • Sir Gawain (5)
    • statues (22)
    • tapestries (2)
    • teaching (23)
    • Tennyson (2)
    • Theodulf (10)
    • Tolkien (7)
    • translations (23)
    • travel (11)
    • Turkey (1)
    • videos (4)
    • Virginia (7)
    • visual arts (12)
    • Walafrid Strabo (10)
    • Washington (50)
    • Washington Irving (3)
    • writing (38)
  • Contact

    • jeffsypeck -at- gmail.com


Quid plura? © 2007 All Rights Reserved. Hosted by ThatHostingPlace.com.
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

This blog uses a modified version of the ShinyRoad 2.1 WordPress theme by Nurudin Jauhari.