St. Mary’s Story
She overlooks the Tyne, stones set in her foundation older
than a hundred nations, her stones masoned by names long dust,
and again she watches
her world and the new world
merge.
For centuries she has witnessed her flock seek a better life,
Seen plagues quarantine her people,
famines harvest her living.
Held sinners, saints and labelled heathens within her congregation.
She has watched allegiances uncloaked and daggers inflame civil wars.
She has witnessed man become his own,
making fire blue, and furious brimstone erupt, spewing grey ashes,
all in the shade of progress.
Yet she has cradled and held them, through thin, thinner,
with magnanimity and patience while the Tyne flows on.
She has borne witness to trials of her own. Been bludgeoned
with forged iron and received her own baptisms of fire.
Her shadow may have been humbled then, but like all faithfuls,
she never sat on her laurels. Now rebuilt, she is reaffirmed
with the new light and shade she gives, and from her heart – flows
the song of the living over the hush of the dead.
Unlike the river, over the centuries, she never ran. Her purpose immovable,
her storm contained. though its shadow will never reach the other riverbank,
the resurrected spiral again faces north, east, south and west.
St. Mary’s is fixed with a new clock, and the time is right again.
Wajid Hussain has a passion for language, and the uncanny ability both the spoken and written word can have on us. As a Poet Artist he draws inspiration particularly from the work of Wilfred Owen, Alama Iqbal, and Cy Twombly. Their influence urges him to make his own creative mark.