Almanac Poetry: Wednesday Evening, St Matthew’s Anglican Church, East Geelong

 

 

Choir practises for Evensong in York Minster. (Wikimedia Commons.)

 

Wednesday Evening, St Matthew’s Anglican Church, East Geelong

 

One night a week, as a child,
returning home from my grandparents’
in the family car,
I’d pass this dark brick church,
its yellow stained-glass windows
blooming with holy light.

 

Sometimes, with my window down,
glorious Evensong voices
were carried to me by the wind.

 

 

(Acknowledgement: first appeared in my poetry collection, Sacredly Profane, Ginninderra Press, 2020.)

 

 

Read more from Kevin Densley HERE

 

Kevin Densley’s latest poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws…I’m Feeling Too Indolent, is available HERE

 

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About

Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.

Comments

  1. John Harms says

    Welcome back Kevin. Great to have you book-ending the Almanac week. Readers look forward to your Monday poem and your Friday prose.

    Evensong is a wonderful thing. Growing up in the Lutheran tradition, where choral music is so important, I have always appreciated Evensong – even though the little country churches where we were didn’t have it.

    Evensong at St John’s College, Cambridge, was memorable.

    I find listening to, and singing in, choirs very moving. The swell of the organ. The voices. The mood. The concept of a pause at the end of the working day, no matter what your philosophical position – and a pause filled with a moment of beauty – is very therapeutic.

    Similarly, the idea of chapel before school. The chaos of getting ready is replaced with the calm of chapel, a hymn, a few words, and then off to terrorise your Maths teacher.

    As an old friend said to me once, “If you’re contemplating the existence of God, turn to Bach.”

  2. Kevin Densley says

    Thanks, JTH, for your welcome back. My Almanac work is certainly something I enjoy doing; in recent years, it has almost become part of my DNA!

    Thank you, also, for your interesting words about Evensong. And I love Bach, too, but for spiritual beauty I have William Byrd’s three Masses – for three, four and five voices respectively – as key personal touchstones. These works were first published in the 1590s.

  3. DBalassone says

    Love those last three lines KD. You took me right there. I can hear it too!

  4. Kevin Densley says

    Thanks, DB – yes, it was such a beautiful sound!

  5. I am part of the Church that meets in St Matthews now. Not quite Evensong but very moving Christmas Eve Service last year.

  6. Kevin Densley says

    That’s interesting, Noel. Thanks for your response. My poem refers to memories of the church that are about fifty years old – which makes me feel quite senior!

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