tree_and_leaf | (no subject)

I've been buying books again, most notably The Poetry of Rowan Williams. He has his moments as a poet, does the ABC. I particularly like this one, which is about the Russian icon painter, Rublev, and his icon of the Old Testament Trinity

Rublev

One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.

I said Here is the blood of all our people,
these are their bruises, blue and purple,
gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.

These (god) are chromatic pains of flesh.
I said, I trust I make you blush,
O I shall stain you with the scars of birth

For ever. I shall root you in the wood,
under the sun shall bake you bread
of beechmast, never let you forth

to the white desert, to the starving sand.
But we shall sit and speak around
one table, share one food, one earth.

Rowan Williams.

† There's also a really disturbing one about Simone Weil, which is a good poem but would, I think, have to be labelled as triggering for anorexia...