Spring Edge: Seasons of Childhood (Peak District, Derbyshire) l—Spring life holds on in the unpretty straggly way that it does holding its fortress of green against the onslaught of frosts all claws and sharpness these little weeds and then the lichen feeling toward the waning sun survives by inches unable to let go of even a single stick of fur making its own dirt on the rock I told a
The Woman in the Sun and the Seven-Headed Dragon; and the War in Heaven, The Apocalypse (England, London, c.1380-c.1390 and c.1400-20) [1] Circles within circles Hours come round The holy woman seated upon the moon gives birth And her child is borne away by an angel From the clutches of the dragon She points to them both And becomes a turning point Later the battle is fought Between the angels and
Crucifixion, Missal (Italy, Perugia, before 1297)[1] The stretched ligaments Are presented by the suffering eye The circles of the haloes scuffed by the devotions Of the monks to the five wounds and the five prayers The translucent fabric phases in and out of visibility Thin and pale Only with the eye an inch away can we make it out Is this what salvation takes? This squinting at suffering through a lens
The Flight into Egypt, Book of Hours (France, Paris, c.1440-c.1450) [1] This refugee family treks into a strangely familiar Egypt The baby wrapped up into a canopic jar His precious body and blood protected by golden swaddling bands An angel follows with a small bag And a heavenly sceptre He walks a step behind the donkey How tiresome for him who can run with the quick and the dead Whose speed
The Annunciation, Hours of Albrecht von Brandenburg (Flanders, Bruges, c.1522-1523)[1] The dove hovers between Mary and her symbolic background Creating its own rainbow in a circle She has not yet acquired her dreadful foreknowledge Or an acceptance of angels Things are not yet out of joint Heaven is heaven and she studies it on her knees and points to it above And she can look forward to a normal future where
Apotheosis I-Apotheosis as an Eagle (for A.D. Hope) I should like to die the death of a bird, To end as an arch into something, A central star Falling but immovable. The death of a bird is the death of a king, So high that the fall is unbelievable as fire Unfaded by the realities of rigor mortis (Stone effigies are soul images not bodies in ice). The death of a
The March of Time The march of time Is all that is left to her now It is an all encompassing Ecstatic religion for her. Silent, military in precision Her life is counted out In beats of unnoticed salutations. She is sacred now To the god of death And as she approaches the mystery She must, like all initiates, learn its language. They fear her now For her knowledge of that
A.B. Miriam Thyme IX: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory I I am a vulture, Picking over old blood, Old magic, Someone else’s death, To make a new alchemy of dust, An empire of paper, And unrealised dreams. The bones of the lion Are cold, I dress its sinews In a palatable light Of barbarism. Feeding to the unbelievers (Who eat the flesh) The thought that the lion is alive. II We are eaters
Hermione: Age 16* The car kicks up ochre dust like an angry child, making bird clouds of red against the perfect sky. It’s a city car. You can tell by the newness of the dirt that freckles its side like makeup. The wheels are warm. You can feel it from here, the rubber is expectant as a horse bit. The car is smoothly impractical, gliding along like an ornate black insect,
The Birth of Artemis* There in the ochre sky-paint of old dust Lay the child Like an unraveled ball of precious thread, Without a tear, Silky with the fluidic ichor of a god’s birth. Now she is anchored Like a pit to the moon Into rocky reality, Now she is grafted like a tear to the face. All the swirling Inner light Of the cosmic womb Gone… The sky is flecked