In this third and concluding volume of The English Cantos, DoorWay (2025), we enter the universe, the starry heavens of Paradise.
From garden to lake baptism to Golgotha and the cross, our Poet sees what must be cleansed, shed, shredded, for his “treachery to goodness, crimes against the truth, and letting beauty stale.” He eventually emerges “delirious almost to vertigo…” We see he is on his way, but which way? He must choose, as his lake becomes an “ocean of love,” and he meets St. Dismas, the penitent thief on the cross alongside Christ, who helps him on his journey.
And so we have come through the portal, but still have a ways to go, on “skyward routes on skating slopes of light,” pulled higher by love. We see Heaven and those who are able to go there, the theology of “God’s greatest heist,” and a “surpassing choir where sound is joy.” As I read and reread and reread again, the images seed my own soul with echoes of Heaven. Longing becomes intense, as it is meant to be.
We meet the Poet’s grandfather who converted late in life and went straight to Paradise, for he believed. Other family members appear and teach us more about Heaven. “Michael, first born of seraphim” reminds us that our Poet is not dead but in flesh and blood, nearly blinded by the light. The angel’s voice is “tornado-like… made images arise, becoming words…” We hear of Michael’s battle with Lucifer, his twin, when “that great Fall caused Time,” and see when the redeemed sons and daughters of man will return, immortal when new time comes.
Love and truth are seeded to flower in this soaring universe of starry love. Yet our poet must still be cleansed, this time “with burning coal to touch my lips… my lips ablaze – cremating all my lies… The burning coal – mouth stuffed with its surprise and heat…” and finally, “The coal, which in my mouth had been a boulder, now slipped down my throat so pebble-small, (though ever after in my soul to smoulder).”
Part fantasy, part suspense, part pain, and part joy, DoorWay’s power is the love of God and our readiness to receive His love: “As in me fear and awe and love criss-crossed in apprehensive trinities…” so that when we see the End of Days, the New Jerusalem and the wrath of God upon Earth, we rightly understand majesty and fear: “I, both for myself and those below, shook, conscious how much I had failed to fear His presence, Name.”
Traveling through this universe of stars, we are given unforgettable images: “For somehow thinking entwined with light, whose colours, dyed so rich, yet too sounds mixed, as if the red rendered note C to sight, and other colours, notes so formed, made text!”
Our Poet wants to stay, but knows he must return to Earth to tell and warn, to “sing of plot – His plot – where all of it began: The love of God for woman and for man.”
And lastly, although there is so much more to say and see and feel and understand, I found that reading the text aloud, paying close attention to punctuation, most helpful, falling into a natural rhythm in the three-line interlocking rhyme scheme, the terza rima, the classic form of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Thank you, James Sale, for Truth told so beautifully, with such a piercing plot – His plot – one we can journey into again and again.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 