2015
After a Visit to The Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
Sun’s rays lance stained glass,
Igniting light.
Like a crucible, cradling glowing-coals,
The church-windows’ leaded grid
Burns colour with such flamboyance
Red translates to vermilion or gules,
Blue blooms into a cerulean azure
And green’s thing hue turns viridian.
Tessellating these ardent shards
Could thrill a glazier to satiation.
Is this why the craftsman
Abjured colour for the lofty panes
Soaring above the north transept?
Was he so glutted on colour
That here he had to let
Pure sky be seen
Freely through clear glass?
Did he slump, spent, enervated
From his glorious fashioning?
Or is this untinted transparency
Pure consummation?
A symphony’s sounds are crowned
After the baton drops.
The theatre is most electric
When a final silence
Stays the crowd’s applause
As the curtain falls.
So it is perhaps no paradox
To find vibrant vitrescence
Perfected in stained glass.
After six days’ labour,
It was the rest God blessed: a mandate
To those made in His image,
To make but never despair
When the medium fails
To stretch to where the dream leads.
Fail it must; for creating’s apogee
Is simply His ineffable, inexpressible divinity.