This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Sarah Law.
Making Assumptions
The starker the better, as far
as holy portraits are concerned:
I can’t care for florid throngs,
those vapid raptures as she floats
up on a cloud, angelic putti to
each side, and not a hair disturbed.
Caught by ineffable, embodied, grace
at the moment of death – barely aged
though full of years – simplicity must have it:
charcoal smudge and dash, on sepia,
a plain bed in a sunlit room, and something
searing – splash of gold, perhaps,
to sketch her passing into mystery –
we few who saw it fallen to our knees.
Sarah Law lives in Norwich, UK, where she is an associate lecturer for the Open University. She edits the online Amethyst Review, a journal for new writing engaging with the sacred. She is a published poet, with six full length collections and contributions in various journals and anthologies. Her collection, Therese: Poems, was published by Paraclete Press in 2020. Her novel, Sketches from a Sunlit Heaven (Wipf and Stock, 2022) is a 2023 Illumination Book Award silver medal winner. Her essay on Julian of Norwich and the City of Norwich, ‘The Soul A City’, has been selected for inclusion in the Orison anthology of Best Spiritual Literature 2023.
