The abbot’s insistent: so much to do before

snow covers the quarries and the passes are closed.

He has us at our desks before dawn; commissions

come down from the abbey every other day.

Yesterday we lost a hymnal

because the gold leaf ran too quickly: the master raged.

Artists and scribes huddle in tense corners

squabbling over designs, boys run

to keep the tapers alight, haul saffron

and chalk, stack the finished gatherings.

 

I step into the frost outside.  The moon

has scraped the sky in readiness:

a dark time.  And yet, the way dawn draws

its colours from the earth

I think of you down the dreary day.

I look at the initial drop beside its line

and think of how your hair falls beside your face;

I see the space left for “Osculetur me”

sharpen my quills, incise the vellum.

A catchword at the bottom of the page

has me leaning forward to hear your voice.

The awl’s marks lead like tiny footsteps

to our household’s industry, and I would send

far for the lapis lazuli of our skies.

 

Can I pour enough colour into these spaces

even if smudged by my failures of reason or spirit?

Do I need to ask, as I have asked all these years,

never needing to ask: who will end my apprenticeship?

Who will say the tiers of my learning are over, grant me

licence to proceed beyond the simplest of undertakings?

Illuminate me.

​

University of Canberra International Poetry Prize longlist 2014