High Windows Poem by Gert Strydom

(in answer to Philip Larkin)

My wife's words come to me:
"hands do go unthinking where they have been"
when in church a young unmarried couple I do see
who are hardly older than teens

and his hand caresses the open back of her dress
brushes against a thigh and a breast.

It's clear that they are having sex with each other,
have found a way to this side of paradise.
I know that this information will vex her father and mother
and I wonder what they do think when for prayer we arise.

(To hell with the pastor the church and its doctrine and teaching?)
To each other there hands are reaching.

She is probably on the pill and without any bonds they are doing it
they are breaking God's law and will, are living a life of ungodliness
and they are good kids that do not wish anybody ill but bit by tiny bit
they are in vain trying to reach for endless happiness

but to both of them there is a kind of tension
and when I look into the pastor's eyes I see comprehension.

Up high the pictured stained glass windows suddenly does glow
when a sunbeam is setting the face of Jesus alight
causing on the bald head of the pastor a kind of halo
and I know that nothing is completely out of sight

while together the church and choir does sing amazing grace
and I do know that God rules supreme through ages, time and space

[Reference: "High Windows" by Philip Larkin.]