The Debate

Unveiling of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge Memorial Statue vs The Accompanying Sermon,
                               st
Ottery St Mary Parish Church ~ 21 October 2022

The rain came and the wind blew
and an indigo drape fell to
unveil its bronze

In that moment of celebration
all was as one within us all
which echoed from a past
aeolian prayer of pure
coalescence

But what does not change
is how a lecture can alter reality
in the deception of its interpreting

We hear it in The Sermon

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory which shall be revealed in us
~ Romans 8: 18-28

and we consider: his rheumatism / his boils / his despair / his fevers / his
melancholia / his treacherous bowels / his neuralgia / his creative drought / (his
kidney stones, bladder cancer, hypochondria) / his constipation / his misery / his
gloom / his addiction / his penury –

“O God save me from myself”
Coleridge unaware he was to be
doctrinally saved
For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why
doth he yet hope for?

More from The Sermon
faith tempered in the crucible of suffering
and elsewhere
A great poet* must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert…
~ from Goodreads re. STC; (*substitute theologian – an imperative from The Sermon)
We see the orthodoxy / we see the symbol / we see the imagination / we see the link /
we see the Anglicanism / we see the resource / we see the appropriation
We should see the mutuality / we should see the spirit / we should see the poet / we
should hear the poet
Let us worship the poet
Worship the aeolian harp / worship the young hope / worship the strength / worship
the precocity
Worship this reading / worship this interpretation

Standing on his stone
beneath the church tower’s bells
it can be only music
and poetry he hears
as for all of us to bear witness