Cathedral Builders – Poem by John Ormond
They climbed the sketchy ladders towards God, with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven, inhabited the sky with hammers,
defied gravity, deified stone, and came down to their suppers, and small beer,
every night slept, lay with their smelly wives, quarreled and cuffed the children, lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy, and every day took to the ladders again, impeded the rights of way of another summer’s swallows,
grew greyer, shakier, became less inclined to fix a neighbour’s roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar, cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck, somehow escaped the plague, got rheumatism, decided it was time to give it up,
to leave the spire to others, stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,
envied the fat bishop his warm boots, cocked a squint eye aloft, and said,
“I bloody did that.”
The Poet
John Ormond (1923-1990) was a Welsh poet and film-maker, born in Britain, at Dunvant, near Swansea. His view of art was one informed by his working-class background, the son of a skilled shoemaker. “Cathedral Builders” is not an exaltation of these grand consecrated structures, rather it is a celebration of the ordinary lives of the uncelebrated workers who commit to the actual work of building cathedrals. Ormond emphasizes the fact that great accomplishments are often the result of the collaborative effort of ordinary people.
- National Library of Wales
- Swansea University
- Museum of the City of New York
- Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library