Poem 224

Staying on the same theme as the last poem but written a lot earlier (1982) this meditates on the Turin Shroud and similar relics (eg. blood of saints that miraculously liquefies on holy days) and how the dried evidence/veneration of one small spillage of blood has led to wholesale tsunamis of it in the centuries since – and yet frustratingly? admirably? like blood off a duck’s back? this has only strengthened and focused the central metaphor of Christianity, one distant man’s sacrifice emblematic of the millions tortured and murdered since …

( good atmosphere and flow here, a sense of depth and mystery, I hit a vein (ha!) that I followed without knowing where I was going, the poem writing itself in a gratifying intuitive way that even better (and as I held my breath) bent to a conclusion I could get behind, turned out to be saying something … the poem sticks the landing in a way that doesn’t always happen when you start with an image or a feeling … great alliteration in the last lines too … )

Human Print

The hand inside the shroud is bloody
in the still echoing places
distant engines vibrate in the stone

what is that above my head
what is that in the thin lead
edge of the slate roof?

claws and wings fall silent too
the human print in the cloth
in the air
in time through years
grows larger overfed
blood sprays over the old stains
swelling them open as they spread

leaving in the linen double-dyed
a wet heart richer red