Classic Poem

. . . the bread had nothing to do with the Body that was what he was dying for — Dom Gregory Dix on Cramner

Dear master, was it really for this you died?
To make the separation clear
That heaven is elsewhere, nowise here?
That the divine bitter yeast is not inside
Our common bread; this body, loved so
In its young crocus light, and the full orb of manhood,
And the paean of sound, all that our senses know
Is not the matter of God?

The " last enchantments of the Middle Age"
In this case, were a faggot fire
And rubbish pitched beside the pyre;
A couple of burnt doors, from this so-intellectual rage
Remain, and the proposition (if dying made it plain)
Flesh turns to ashes, bread cannot turn to God.
Yet how if the question that cost so much pain
Itself was wrongly made?

A change takes place: to this all can assent;
But question " what place does it take?
Or none at all?" — there's the mistake,
There we confuse our terms. For this is an event,
Not subject to a physical experiment
As water is split for energy; no gain
In splitting hairs. We know that God can enter
To what He first contained;

We know the kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
But not atomic. Who can weigh
Love in a man's heart? So we still say
" Body and soul" as though they were at variance.
Who can weigh Love? Yet sensibly he burns,
His conflagration is eyes, hands, hearts:
So is he sensed, but in and out of the eternal,
Because the sense departs.