28 JULY 1990, Page 33

Stacking logs

I contemplate my orderly logs unkindly minded of mediaeval souls stacked up for judgment, a year's burning, none to be reexamined: the judgment autocratic, no jury summoned.

I shall judge beech truer than ash or birch, warmer than introvert oak, for the open hearth.

How these clumped beeches are mourned, which should have stood, not burned.

I do not believe in hellfire. So much is said. Burning questions are answered, if answered at all, only when we are dead.

How the dead, too, are felled, their outlines fade.

Like all logs and wood, we burn or rot, knowing no other avenue before God.

My belief in mercy hovers in the wind of hearsay - 'whose property is always to have mercy.'

Sydney Giffard