WE HAVE come again to the feast of Corpus Christi, that annual invitation to contemplate the mystery of the eucharist. I have been approaching that mystery through poetry in a more extended and concentrated way in the course of composing Galahad and the Grail, the first volume of Merlin’s Isle, my Arthuriad (Books, 27 March).

Indeed, the entire Grail story, from the first arrival of the sacred chalice on the shores of Albion with Joseph of Arimathaea, to the final mysterious “achievement” of the Grail by Sir Galahad, could be regarded as an extended, imaginative meditation on the eucharist, glimpsed for a moment in the mysterious Grail Castle, so that we might approach it all the more reverently on any given Sunday in our parish church.

I myself wondered, as I approached this moment in my poem, how I might put any of this into words — a question that I ask in the poem itself:

How may I of this moment speak?
What human tongue can tell?
Only the angels have that speech
Which might towards the mystery reach.
Where they stand singing each to each
Their Sanctus doth the spirit search
And lift to heaven the struggling church
That even earthly minds might reach
To where the angels dwell.

In the end, I found that I had to let each of the three Grail knights give his own different account of their experience, since no one by themselves can grasp the entire mystery; for this is a communal and not just an individual rite; communion in its deepest sense.

For Sir Percivale, the Grail becomes the meeting place of heaven and earth. The elements of bread and wine, “which earth has given and human hands have made”, bring with them, into the hands of Christ, the whole creation:

The moment he removed the veil
I saw the chalice shine.
Though silver, it seemed clear as glass
And through it I saw all things pass.
All the earth gives, her living grass,
Her grain, her vines, her woods, her seas,
All earthly things, that fade and pass
Seemed lifted in that living glass
To meet the things divine.

As though the Grail an isthmus were
Between the earth and Heaven.
Earth rose, but also Heaven came down,
And the whole Grail, from stem to crown,
Was where they met with glory crowned,
And all of us on God’s good ground
Seemed given and forgiven.

Sir Bors, in the same moment, sees and experiences the communion of the saints:

When Galahad removed the veil
It seemed to me I saw
A great un-numbered company
From every tribe and family
And my own folk and ancestry
Worship the lamb in awe.

And I joined them in worship too
And they communed with me.
And we were joined by deeper bonds
Than kinship, nation, house or lands,
Woven together, many strands,
As God’s own tapestry.

As for Galahad himself, his vision would take more time and verse than this column allows.