Are We Not All Angels?
Angels by Anthony Trott
Angels by Anthony Trott |
The Angel with the Broken Wing
I am the Angel with the Broken Wing,
The one large statue in this quiet room.
The staff finds me too fierce, and so they shut
Faith’s ardor in this air-conditioned tomb.
The docents praise my elegant design
Above the chatter of the gallery.
Perhaps I am a masterpiece of sorts—
The perfect emblem of futility.
Mendoza carved me for a country church.
(His name’s forgotten now except by me.)
I stood beside a gilded altar where
The hopeless offered God their misery.
I heard their women whispering at my feet—
Prayers for the lost, the dying, and the dead.
Their candles stretched my shadow up the wall,
And I became the hunger that they fed.
I broke my left wing in the Revolution
(Even a saint can savor irony)
When troops were sent to vandalize the chapel.
They hit me once—almost apologetically.
For even the godless feel something in a church,
A twinge of hope, fear? Who knows what it is?
A trembling unaccounted by their laws,
An ancient memory they can’t dismiss.
There are so many things I must tell God!
The howling of the dammed can’t reach so high.
But I stand like a dead thing nailed to a perch,
A crippled saint against a painted sky.
~ BY DANA GIOIA
When I read this I immediately thought of the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., The Sacred Made Real which highlighted Spain's mostly wooden sculptures that leave the churches once a year for Holy Week clad in real clothing and are venerated as they are carried thru the streets during the week.
Mater Dolorosa Roldan. Our Lady of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa) by Pedro Roldán |
This poem reminded me of that day, of that exhibit, of that profound emotion which was beyond religion, beyond gender or race or creed or station.....
Gregorio Fernández, Dead Christ (detail), 1625-30, © Photo Imagen M.A.S. Courtesy of Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid |
Pedro de Mena (1628–1688) | Christ as the Man of Sorrows (Ecce Homo) |
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