1.The bowls are filled with offerings. One holds the azurite, One malachitethe other things Are unguent, gold, and light
Or rather, crystals still unsealed By mortar and pestle, Their inner nature unrevealed Like a stoppered vessel.
2.He steps into a finished work As if into a hall Of mirrorsarts, randomness, quirk Each have a right to call
His name: his face is everywhere, He’s center, edge, and four Corners; and yet, he’s lost, not there Dispersed in rock like ore.
3.Who unwound this labyrinth Of noonday mystery? And what white figure on a plinth Ordained its history?
Some forty layerings of paint Refract the sunthis way The jewelled landscape, like a saint, Goes saturate with day.
4.Names of God, in silver script, Are tarnishing with time, The golden words of God encrypt His keys to the sublime.
The facets of the painter’s soul Are glittering like glass. In shattering he yields the whole Brokenness like the Mass.
Marly Youmans is the author most recently of Claire (LSU Press), a sequence of poems, and The Curse of the Raven Mocker, a Young Adult novel. Its sequel, Ingledove, will be published in May by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Copyright 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine. Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
