Poem
Sarah Howe
Acts and Monuments
Acts and Monuments
Acts and Monuments
Word from Ely:the alabaster Virgin’s
bludgeoned head
feigned miracles
tumbled twenty ells –
her velveted cheek
moored in an altar’s
candle-strewn jetsam
was said to drop
a waxen tear.
At the priory’s fall
its people came too late
amidst clamour &
cries. The glistering Saints
torn from their Sunday
height – each trindle,
screen, & tabernacle,
each tilted face –
quite slubbered over
– washed with white.
As Homily blurred into Homily,
Binham’s flock
continued to gaze –
a whole generation
disobedient children
thumbed at the lime’s
forgetfulness, hoping to coax
from stubborn chalk
that serpent’s peepholed green,
a flash of wheatsheaf hair
almost as bright as ever it was.
Sarah Howe
(Hong_kong, 1983)
Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Born in Hong Kong to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her poetry is precisely painted and aesthetically striking, often grappling with, and delighting in, problems of cultural identity and representation. Like Kei Miller’s explorations of hybridity and cross-cultural identities, Howe’s poetry is inventive, ...
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Acts and Monuments
Word from Ely:the alabaster Virgin’s
bludgeoned head
feigned miracles
tumbled twenty ells –
her velveted cheek
moored in an altar’s
candle-strewn jetsam
was said to drop
a waxen tear.
At the priory’s fall
its people came too late
amidst clamour &
cries. The glistering Saints
torn from their Sunday
height – each trindle,
screen, & tabernacle,
each tilted face –
quite slubbered over
– washed with white.
As Homily blurred into Homily,
Binham’s flock
continued to gaze –
a whole generation
disobedient children
thumbed at the lime’s
forgetfulness, hoping to coax
from stubborn chalk
that serpent’s peepholed green,
a flash of wheatsheaf hair
almost as bright as ever it was.
Acts and Monuments
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