My Entry for the Turner Prize

You may have forgotten - or even assumed that I would - but here is my entry, as promised in my post of May 11, for the non-existent Turner Prize for Poetry".

I Don't Know What I mean, but I Definitely Disagree.

Out of the darkness at the deep
heart of what I am, blind Angel, blinded
by internal light, by light
that burns its way towards the surface.
I am the Bush that burns
and yet is not consumed,
the burning Bush from which the voice of God goes forth
into the world, to put
out cap for coin, for currency
enough to buy this world of frivol
and fatuity, this pin-ball world,
for decency, for
eyes like those my father had
that saw in darkness,
sawed through the darkness
to the grain that ran our way.

I am the one you show across the road,
your penny-whistler whistling in the dark.
But friend, the other path is darker still.
All paths are dark except to one
who lives in darkness.

I am the hewn stone raised in witness,
the white stone of acquittal,
the stone-cold certainty
rejected by the builders.

But friends, know this:
there are those in this wicked world,
insurgents, evil men who snatch
the burning brands from me,
the lighted beacon of the western world,
to keep their flames alight
across the world's dark voids.
You see them in Iraq - and
what's that other country thereabouts?
But they shall not prevail, and those that die
I shall raise up.

Friends, let me be frank: at times
I grope for walls, for footholds, footling
holds, forgetting I have wings.
Come in beneath the shadow of my wings. There find
my Father's mercy seat.

I am the edifice
upon the megalith
upon the pebble from the shore
upon a grain of sand
adrift upon the void.
But friends, the void shall not prevail!

Friends, I am all things to all men, both
Elephant and Castle, Bush and Shepherd, and below
me are my Father's mansions. I, the way,
the only way, the escalator to the lines
of your salvation. No one can come
to Him but first descend in me.