Cattle browse in the meadow the sprung arch,
shot of its tracery, frames
Form looking out of ruin, a different view
shaped by the form’s persistence
Miracle,
no other word for it, the enduring face
of Andrei Rublyov’s Saviour, gazing out
from what, after several centuries as a doorstep,
the context gone, is plainly still a board:
not Christ the judge, this one – a hurt survivor
with knowledge it is hard to look away from
of what is suffered here
And come again
as Radnóti’s last poems from the dark
and warmth of a mass grave, which they had shared
with swathes of greatcoat and corrupting flesh,
So the old bagwoman,
raddled, incontinent, hoists her reeking skirts
and, her lips pursed for crooning, rasps aloud:
Paradise, boys, come on, you can have it now.