On Revisiting St Mary’s, Prittlewell

by Philip Quinlan

Small voices suffocate in breath,
so deafness must be unassumed,

and, while these walls seem slow to speak,
their diapason is the tinnitus of stone
whose semi-silence is a fundamental tone:

re-echoed rumours of the hopeful tongue,
in hushed mimesis of the truth beneath,
that, though the voices are consumed,
the breath lives longer than the song.


Find out more about Philip Quinlan’s work at his website, http://www.theverbfori.net
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