25 APRIL 1987, Page 27

Holy Man

Religious grace-hopers should be bony and leggy Not comfortable as you.

The shabby habit of a Ribera saint Would not look right in your kind of squalor.

Yours is the motorist's pallor, The modern face.

In the dried landscape of hallucination You could not find your place Bearing a motorist's Bible In the language of the petrol station.

Jesus lives, you say, For those who pray.

I have learned to distrust the certain Who would bully my love, my intuition, Having been so often mistaken And some with my hard-gained money. You, a stockbroker of souls Which could be just holes?

The hermit makes escape In a more disreputable shape, Craving his locust, watercress, wild honey, Uncertain of salvation Redemption or other abstraction.

Alan Dixon