The droning tram swings westward: shrill
the wire sings overhead, and chill
midwinter draughts rattle the glass
that shows the dusky way I pass
to yon four-turreted square tower
that still exalts the golden hour
where youth, initiate once, endears
a treasure richer with the years.
Sudden, a gap of quiet air
and gather’d dark, where, set a pace
beyond the pavement’s coiling race
and mask’d by bulk of sober leaves,
the plain obtruncate chancel heaves,
whose lancet-windows faintly show
suffusion of a ruddy glow,
the lamp of adoration, dim
and rich with unction kept for Him
whom Bethlehem’s manger first made war,
the sweetest god in human form,
love’s prisoner in the Eucharist…
Poem by Christopher Brennan about St Benedict’s, which he passed each day on the tram to go to his teaching job in German at Sydney University
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