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Lines Composed a Few Miles Above a Rural Church 1
No picturesque ruins will remain for us
To wander through with our sketchbooks and pens
For drawing pictures or writing blank verse
About bare ruin’d 1 air-conditioning ducts
The baptismal font will be repurposed
As a bird-bath (with a plastic Saint Elvis)
And the stained-glass windows will be sold off
As fashionable bathroom accessories
The crucifix of deplorable design 2
Will be stored in the back of someone’s garage
Until the girls carry it off to the woods
And laughingly use it for target practice
A rubbly field will serve as a soccer pitch
Until seventy years 3 have passed away
1 Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”
2 Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
3 Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
4 Daniel 9:1-2
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