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STEWART SANDERSON

The Camel

Drumcliffe Monastery, County Sligo


Facing westwards, the camel

if indeed it is

a camel, watches


the cars as they hurtle by

beyond the vallum:

a millennium


at least it has been waiting

in the rain out here

as fresh worlds appear


before it, chiselled on this

cross by an artist

who might have noticed


its like on a long journey

to the Bible lands –

a sight which his hands


remembered, or more likely

extrapolated

from an image he’d


happened upon one day

in a manuscript

which image then slipped


onto this sandstone pillar

abstracted slightly

as the rich must be


perhaps, to enter heaven:

a camel which could

unravel, a flood


of interlacing knotwork,

to spool like a sigh

through some needle’s eye.

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