Evensong, Durham Cathedral by Amaleena Damlé

Evensong, Durham Cathedral

you preferred churches

temples were too noisy

too many colours

you were happier

in the stillness of stone

in the echo of an arch

I’m not one to track anniversaries

but I’ve lit a candle for you

in churches all over the world

now in the ether of a cathedral

I watch a small boy

dressed in purple robes

face tilted with wonder

treble notes falling soft as twilight

he bears your name as one of his own

a grandchild one of four

you never met

Amaleena Damlé is a poet and an academic literary critic, who lives in Durham. She writes scholarly and creative pieces about bodies and beings, and has poems in After…, Dreich, IceFloe Press, The French Literary Review and Sarasvati.