CS Lewis: A Sonnet

Scribe of the Kingdom, Keeper of the Door

As I mentioned in my last post, this is a Jubilee year for CS Lewis as, fifty years after his death, we reassess his extraordinary legacy. That can be done in lots of ways and I will be participating in some of the conferences that will hilight the sheer weight and power of his academic work, and explore the depth and richness of his imaginative writing. But for many of us the debt we owe to Lewis is more personal, and more poetic; it is a debt to someone who has opened a spiritual door, someone who has baptised the imagination. As I worked on academic papers I found that what I also needed to do was write a poem! So here is a sonnet articulating something of who Lewis is and what we owe to him. It will be appear as part of a sequence called ‘The Household of Faith’ in The Singing Bowl, my next volume of poetry with the Canterbury Press, which should be out in November.

As usual you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

CS Lewis

From ‘Beer and Beowulf’ to the seven heavens,

Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere,

You are our portal to those hidden havens

Whence we return to bless our being here.

Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door

Which opens on to all we might have lost,

Ward of a word-hoard in the deep hearts core

Telling the tale of Love from first to last.

Generous, capacious, open, free,

Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds

Through which to travel, whence we learn to see

Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds,

Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing,

Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King.

Your wardrobe mind has furnished us with worlds