Poem
Pauline Stainer
The Blessing
The Blessing
The Blessing
There they were –ordinary, unknowable,
beasts waiting to be blessed
at St. Luke in the Fields
some trying to break cover
as if they hear
the whizz of the biblical wind
in the mulberry trees
others, domesticated,
raising their symphony
for wild instruments
under the verve of prayer.
Over the Hudson River
the cloud puts out a paw,
skyscrapers stretch
with the heat
the bees of the invisible
are bleached in sunlight,
If anyone is in Christ
he is a new creature.
Nothing is like
the anxiety of animals
waiting for Adam
to name them
yet some lie down
in the enclosed garden
as if the tree of charity
sprang from their breasts.
© 2008, Pauline Stainer
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
Pauline Stainer
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1941)
Pauline Stainer has always worked outside the metropolitan poetry community. Yet she won first prize in the Stroud Festival poetry competition in 1984, and has won major awards in several other competitions, including the TLS and the King’\'s Lynn, Cheltenham, Leek, Hastings and York festival competitions. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1987, and came to wider notice with her quiet...
Poems
Poems of Pauline Stainer
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The Blessing
There they were –ordinary, unknowable,
beasts waiting to be blessed
at St. Luke in the Fields
some trying to break cover
as if they hear
the whizz of the biblical wind
in the mulberry trees
others, domesticated,
raising their symphony
for wild instruments
under the verve of prayer.
Over the Hudson River
the cloud puts out a paw,
skyscrapers stretch
with the heat
the bees of the invisible
are bleached in sunlight,
If anyone is in Christ
he is a new creature.
Nothing is like
the anxiety of animals
waiting for Adam
to name them
yet some lie down
in the enclosed garden
as if the tree of charity
sprang from their breasts.
From: Crossing the Snowline
The Blessing
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