The Stone Ship: A Nocturne in Three Watches

As a poetic drama The Stone Ship transports readers on a lifetimes voyage of discovery. Jerome an amnesiac wonders how he became a monastic porter at Cloistergarth. His search for the lost years becomes a deep well from which all the fragments of his past emerge; the demonized adolescent rescued by the ghost of his admonitory mother; the pius twelve-year-old who relives the passion play with his siblings; and the boy of eight who declares Wasnt no ghost came back! Dont know where he is but my dad isnt dead. And who is the youth of twenty-three pursuing priestly studies but badgered by peers visits the brawling town Magdalene? While Eli the extortionist lays his blackmail trap for the youth. The Sabat nightmare ensues. Whether real or hallucinatory it delivers at the climax a blow to the stricken conscience of the youth and a blinding lucidity of recall to the monk. Later the boy attempts suicide but is caught in the fishermans nets. Sent off to the Confessor he is absolved and the inevitable Lethean river descends. Upon his embarkation Jerome knows the immense joy of going home as a son to his Fathers good pleasure. Dunstan Massey is a monk of Westminster Abbey in Mission Canada and a faculty member of the Seminary of Christ the King. He is a sculptor fresco painter poet and the author of The Mystic Mountain (2002).