Reflects through poetry and prose on the gift of the transfiguring experience.
THROUGH A CLAUDE GLASS DARKLY
The picturesque Traveller
your eighteenth century aesthete –
contemplates his glass.
Elegant, cased, convex,
its black mirror cups
his over the shoulder view,
subduing strident colours,
harmonising tones,
encapsulating mountains
into a blue Claude.
The Picturesque Traveller
has dared the Lakeland peaks.
Perseus with polished shield!
He’ll take Medusa.
Now through a glass darkly
he sees like Paul. But what –
sweet heaven! – what if he turned? …