Wet walls of rock enclose <br />a caverned space — earth’s womb <br />wherein we wander like <br />lost souls in exile <br />from our sunlit world above. <br />Here chthonic gods and goddesses <br />of darkness rule. There is no sky <br />but far away and high above, <br />faint daylight from the surface <br />filters through the cracks <br />and chimneys in the roof. <br />The only sound down here <br />is trickling water and the <br />crash and splash of three tall waterfalls <br />that fall so fast <br />through all the emptiness of this <br />great cavern underground. They say <br />it is so vast, a whole <br />cathedral could be lost <br />and swallowed up within its maw. <br />Before these towering walls <br />and buttresses of rock, as old <br />as time, I feel a need <br />to kneel, for never before, <br />in any cathedral made by man, <br />have I felt such a <br />terrible sense of religious awe. <br /> <br /><br />Pete Crowther<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gaping-ghyll/
