Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image ...
Ten Commandments in the chapel,
in the apse or on the crossing,
are whitewashed or effaced.
Which do we acknowledge?
and is there sin in knowledge?
Was Russell right to say
there are four we now ignore
or Clark to affirm that we obey
one only of the ten today?
What is it gives iconoclasts
this deep necessity to destroy
icons of their neighbouring tribes,
decapitate the cherubim
singing in the Mary Chapel,
destroy the joy of who rejoiced
when eating Eve’s enticing apple?
Men seek for God’s reality
in some dark search for purity
and consecrate this hatred
in heaven, on earth, beneath the sea
of another deity’s beauty.
May not Form embody Voice?
Is finite shape a blasphemy?
Some look on Caesar’s icon coin,
render what to Caesar’s due,
depicting saints and angels
whose likenesses can ne’er be true.
When they performed stage Mysteries,
images of Christ and Maries three,
ignoring Deuteronomy,
then the Levellers came again,
returning none predicted when.
Why does the need to represent
arouse this purist cruelty?
Pure, Pure, the platonistic cry,
Form lies beneath the vapour,
the enticing blue and green
of Plato’s passing nature.
In Byzantium magnificent
illuminati of the Word,
depict in line a world sublime,
eschew the human face,
eliminate, assimilate
a corrupted human race.
Why should not unlettered men
not only hear the words but see
create both form and figure,
express the will to represent
dreams of beauty and of truth
in self-delight in east or south?
In cathedrals of the north
arms of angels beckon, share,
with workman, mason, even demon,
a paradisal celebration.
How serve the interest of a nation -
clean what some call degradation,
the serpent of a wandering race,
a golden calf of settled folk,
no viscous icon of a Dali?
Purificazione generale!
Malevich’s supreme white square,
Mondrian’s equilibration.
But Picasso fashioned history,
Guernica’s silent screaming horse,
an indomitable impurity.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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