Phillip Medhurst

A Pilgrimage to Truth
Feb 20, 2016

Teresa of Avila

 

A cherub pressed me to my knees:

He held a flaming spear.

He struck again, and then again:

As much as I could bear.

I soon abandoned all desire

For this sweet pain to cease.

No other bliss compares to this

Felicitous disease.

I greet this torment willingly.

I fondly hug the wound.

Love’s quarry, breathless, flees no more,

For she is run to ground.

 

 

 

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Feb 20, 2016

Noel

 

Incandescent lamp-posts glow

Brightly through the shower of snow.

The tombstones, wet,

Reflect a flash

Of fake resuscitation.

The pale scene vaunts

Beauty unmarred,

Unstained by obscene flesh.

How perfect and pristine! –

Unspoilt by bestial notions

Of God dropped in the hay,

And livestock’s smoky breath

Set to thaw Death.

 

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Feb 18, 2016

Samson

 

Sam found a little knife

While wand’ring in the ward.

When nurses tried to truss

The old man to a chair,

He cut their knotted tape

And made good his escape.

 

But is he strong enough

To grab with steady hand

The starched lapel of Life-

In-Death’s white coat and crash

That cranium’s empty dome?

That way, he might get home.

 

 

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Feb 18, 2016

Noli Me Tangere (to Mary Magdalene)

 

To me it seemed a comforting idea,

Too welcome, too sublime to be untrue

That love and meaning could thus rendez-vous:

Be gazed upon, and touched.

 

But doubts persist that I imagined Him.

When He did not appear I then assumed

A love that God in fact was loath to show

Unto The Crucified.

 

Yet can there be conclusion to my grief

If I can never cling to one who walks

Within the graveyard of my dreams, with voice

Unsilenced by his pain?

 

And does my vision promise me too much?

Does Christ Himself recoil from ill-placed trust,

Compelled to say, “Noli me tangere” –

That flesh can never tarry.

 

 

 

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Feb 18, 2016

Exodus

 

O Christ, thy crown is broke in two pieces:

Give half to me, O give half to me.

O Christ thy cloak is riven in pieces:

Give some to me, O give some to me.

 

And I will mould a smaller crown,

And patch a cloak for me.

And I shall go down, down,

Down unto the sea.

And the sea shall part for me.

 

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Feb 17, 2016

THE LAST ENEMY

image

This is a photo of De Loutherbourg’s original drawing pasted into the Bowyer Bible, a grangerized version of the Macklin Bible.

Bowyer Bible 43.6063/6064. Tail-piece to the first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, vignette with sword slicing through a skull with snake in mouth. See 1 Corinthians 15:26. The print: letterpress in two columns above and on verso. 1800. Inscriptions: Lettered below image with production detail: “P J de Loutherbourg RA inv et del”, “J. Heath direx” and publication line: “Published by T Macklin June 17 1800”. Print made by James Heath. Dimensions: Height: 487 millimetres; width: 390 millimetres.

From a collection of photographs of the Bowyer Bible in Bolton Museum, England curated by Phillip Medhurst.

Phillip Medhurst

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Feb 16, 2016

He Descended into Hell

image

He Descended into Hell

Phillip Medhurst

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Feb 16, 2016

He Descended into Hell

 

My heart goes down to Hell with him,

Though I must shut my eyes

To what he sees. I fear the dark,

But trail with quiet tread

Lest he looks back,

And weakening, lets me cling to him.

 

For he has work to do within

That senseless void, and I

Must be a hovering thing and hope

That he will see the light

Again, and say

That unmade, made again, is good.

 

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Feb 16, 2016

Mater Dolorosa

 

The pains of childbirth, then of dispossession,

A leaping heart, then steady retrogression

Was all angelic flutters came to bring.

Fair salutations bore a farewell sting.

 

And Death’s dark angel did not pass my door,

But slammed the board, demanding more and more.

My God, you owe this to me: let me see

Wherefore my child has now forsaken me.

 

I want to see him rise to tear the veil,

And borne by angels his kind Father hail,

As his bejewelled banner he unfurls,

His blood its rubies and my tears its pearls.

 

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Feb 16, 2016

The Rood

 

A tree is butchered into beams,

Torn flesh emblematised,

As Jesse’s rod is re-conceived –

Delivered cruciform.

 

Adorned with jewels, hung with gold,

The ark becomes a rood.

A flotsam of humanity

Drowns in a sea of blood.

 

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