Image by Karl Isakson
(This poem is a reflection on The Raising of Lazarus, two reliefs at Chichester Cathedral depicting John 11:1-45)
Lazarus
From the rock and from the deep
The sculptor lifts him out aware.
This is the dead man's waking stare.
This is a man carved out of sleep.
...
Lazarus lifts huge hands in prayer
He turns the world round in his stare.
He sees his late death everywhere.
It hurts his eyes, he has to care.
Now broken from the rock of sleep,
He comes towards us from the deep.
To face once more the morning star,
To see us desperate as we are.
And Lazarus relearns despair.
His look is grave; his gaze is deep
Upon us, men carved out of sleep
Who wish to pray but have no prayer.
2
A weightless traveler, I too come back
From miles of air, from distant and strange lands,
Put on my house again, my work, my lack,
And looking down at my own clumsy hands,
Feel courage crack.
...
How can I answer all these needs at once?
...
How lift my smothered flame up to the day?
Have I come back depleted of desire,
To tire and fray?
At last I hear the silence in the room:
The buried self is breaking through to be,
And Lazarus is calling me by name.
At last I slowly lift the poem free,
one-pointed flame.
...
Detached from all except the living beat,
I dance my way into complex design
On weightless feet.
-May Sarton in Collected Poems 1930-93
Now maybe you could analyze this poem for us....
ReplyDeleteHere's a summary (by Elizabeth Michael Boyle)which I found with the poem:
ReplyDeleteMay Sarton's treatment, which, although beginning with a fairly bleak vision, works its way to hope. Sarton, inspired by an 11th century stature, appropriates the Lazarus theme as a metaphor for rebirth through art. First, the sculptor brings Lazarus to life in stone; then the poet endows him with 20th century angst. Finally, she experiences an artistic "breakthrough," hears Lazarus calling her back to life, and begins to create new music out of the old life she has resumed. Sarton's poem suggests that the resurrection miracle is accessible to all of us, not in spectacular physical comebacks, but in the perennial renewal of ordinary lives through creativity.