Tregenna Hill

Altars and Allegories

Caitlin Smith Gilson

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781666732030
  9781666725278
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666725285
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Tregenna Hill: Altars and Allegories are love poems cutting through and across the many layers of love: personal, historical, religious, and philosophical; an elegy to the beginnings and ends, to the untranslatable moments in time which contain all that is Good and Beautiful. At the altar before God and human intimacy, there remains the gentle yet brutal yoking of eros and agape with innocence, ecstasy, confession, newness, temporality, death, and surrender.

Ad Secundum: Mortalitas et Caritas

I give to you my undivided regret

A simpler anguish without regard for its consecration

Or for those other unspoken things that never find recourse for their attention

Reality is a recluse forged in this furnace below

We never had anything to show

Dangling toes knock upon the wishing wells of sin

Trace and lead and never heed this uncertain end

Distraction thickened around my mouth

Words can no longer penetrate only facilitate

The growl of little death that enchants in its decay

That spirals like the river bends

Bewilders the clay-framed divine and then signals

That then had passed like crimson softening in the snow

Fists of uncompromising penance

Stay to repeat the loss of blood

This body is a lost foe

Found in the fall of single-handed remorse

Nothing is held evenly in this dignified fallacy

Nothing escapes the tinged hue of candles

Strewn in far off churches

In far lost lands

Forgiveness and guilt clasp hands like little girls

Magnificently unprepared for that long littleness

Which ensues and burdens these ancient walls

Cold stone pressed its wine for empty eyes

For miles and miles

For rows and rows

Amber beads warm for another worn prayer

Through fingers and thumb nothing can be undone

In a stranger corner trails an oil stain more beautiful than its illusion

Her light and heavenly eyes well with resin and feverish touch

For miles and miles

For rows and rows

Empty rows quicken into miles once valid

Swarming bees bow and hush this sweet undertaking

This savor I cannot defend

Bells hollow a heavy head

That failed to position the thing...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Tregenna Hill
• Office of the Dead
• Agnus Dei Memento Mei
• Mater Dolorosa Memento Mei
• Song for the Flesh
• The Song of the Spirit
• Gozo to Patmos
• Our Happiness Has Unmade Us
• Your Enduring Inelegance
• In the Cower
• The Song of the Soul
• Let the Waterfalls Fall over Me
• Our Lady’s Reprieve
• Farewell Sestina
• Light of All Valleys, Light of All Faces
• Ad Memoriam Aeternam
• Et Erraverit Una Ex Eis
• Remember Me Contra Mundum
• Non sum Dignus Calciamenta Portare
• Novitiate Grace
• I Tell Myself with a Jealous Love
• SUMMA SOLEMNIS
• Ad Primum: Et Umbra Mortis
• Ad Secundum: Mortalitas et Caritas
• Sed Contra: Via Negativa
• Respondeo Dicendum: Longior Via
• [A] Office of the Dead
• [A] Agnus Dei Memento Mei
• [A] Mater Dolorosa Memento Mei
• [A] Song for the Flesh
• [A] The Song of the Spirit
• [A] Gozo to Patmos
• [A] Our Happiness Has Unmade Us
• [A] Your Enduring Inelegance
• [A] In the Cower
• [A] The Song of the Soul
• [A] Let the Waterfalls Fall over Me
• [A] Our Lady’s Reprieve
• [A] Farewell Sestina
• [A] Light of All Valleys, Light of All Faces
• [A] Ad Memoriam Aeternam
• [A] Et Erraverit Una Ex Eis
• [A] Remember Me Contra Mundum
• [A] Non sum Dignus Calciamenta Portare
• [A] Novitiate Grace
• [A] I Tell Myself with a Jealous Love
• SUMMA SOLEMNIS
• [A] Ad Primum: Et Umbra Mortis
• [A] Ad Secundum: Mortalitas et Caritas
• [A] Sed Contra: Via Negativa
• [A] Respondeo Dicendum: Longior Via