PILGRIMAGE, by Gillian Southgate

 

 

On their Easter pilgrimage through the Balkans

The Muslim Amar declared with shining eyes

That he could see God everywhere. Edwina Currie

Stared wordless at the concentration camp

Where German bullets had strafed the walls

And killed her own good people in the war.

The convert Adrian Chiles found his better angel

Sitting In a roadside apple tree. And Fatima Whitbread,

Shy with humility, told the camera she had never

Known her parents, but lifted her eyes to the hills,

Till the group beheld the spires of Istanbul

Shining through mist in the valley below them.