Gill Learner
Through and Through
Second Light Poetry Competition 2008 SHORTLISTED
I never tired of watching him at work, itching
to collect the forbidden litter of his craft – glittery
like the remnants of a crown. Before the war
he sketched a promise of my own, with dragonflies
and reeds, but a mortar in the fight for Anzio
stilled the welted hands that had refused to hold a gun,
chose stretcher-poles instead.
Years on, stepping from lake to coloured lake
in Notre-Dame of Chartres, I feel my nape-hair rise
at the shades of maîtres verriers eight centuries gone
who placed alongside saints their fellow artisans:
wheelwright, cooper and apothecary, a wine-grower
treading grapes. My father would have honoured
the artists’ genius if not their god.
The remembered fumes of solder sear my nose,
I hear the scrit of a scoring tool, the crunch and snap
as crescents, triangles, and random shapes
are bitten from sheets of glass: heaven in speedwell blue,
haloes the red of sun on my closed eyes,
robes like bluebell leaves, the gold of marmalade for angels’ hair;
lead strips to rim and bind.
He could never cycle past a church but must go in,
examine others’ work, critique, admire, till my mother
led me into the air for our necks to uncrick among the stones.
A glazier, he’d say, fills holes for light, and sight
onto the world. I make images to linger on.
By focussing its power through chromatic chemistry,
he dared manipulate the sun.
Page(s) 32
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