Mosaic of the Nativity, Serbia, Winter 1993
by Jane Kenyon
On the domed ceiling God
is thinking: I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:
“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”
God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
How can it can be that I've never encountered this poem before? My immediate source is www.inwardoutward.org; the print source is Collected Poems (Greywolf Press, 1995).
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5 comments:
Wow, cool.
Mich
I've never seen this either. Thanks.
absolutely beautiful, and i, too, have never encountered it. thank you.
Oh my.
Yeah, when I read it at I/O the last verse especially just knocked me over.
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