Lay for the Day29th September

Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael the archangel. His name means “Who is like unto God?”. He is usually depicted as the warrior who leads the heavenly host into battle against the rebel angels, and subdues the devil-dragon. He is also represented as a judge of souls, as an intercessor and as a champion for people, with the power to bring them out of Hell. In the Roman liturgy for the dead there is the invocation: “May Michael the standard-bearer lead them into the holy light, which you promised of old to Abraham and his seed.”

Horatio Nelson was born on 29th September 1758 at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk.

from The Legacy

The Heroes

What makes a heavenly heart is only this:
The hell-like deep it reaches to below
And lays it down in, where lost spirits blow,
The bottom of whose worlds, with a dead hiss,
Fell out so long ago they never miss
The floor. There, with the basest of the low,
To go on calling on the good they know
And keep in flame till all climb safe to bliss.
Tireless while times accumulate zeroes,
Outweighing hate’s pound with their loving ounce,
Remain the labours of the holy heroes.
The brain oozes thought, and glands brew their bile,
And each is needful and neither is vile,
But the heart, the heart, the heart is what counts.

John Gibbens
from Legacy

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar