Arts Articles
‘For younger readers: Balthasar’s Cloak’, by Geoffrey Weeden, from December 22, 1972
In a church in Ravenna in Italy there is a very old mosaic picture. It shows the three Wise Men, Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar, carrying their gifts to Bethlehem. Balthasar wears a rich purple cloak with a gold hem and a jewelled clasp. This story is about Balthasar’s cloak. ...
Nuclear family Christmas
There are lights in all the houses, she says to herself, (no one else being available). Standing deep, in discarded wrapping paper, by the window in a darkened room, she stares…
The tall red candles
‘The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall.’ – Old Carol
Between
Between bullet and flesh, a spirit rising like mist, mostly unseen. Between the thought and the deed a sliver of time that makes the earth quake.
In the Atlas mountains
Five faces and a white-nose ass disrupting dust rise up the slope of olive trees
Beneath sufferance stones
He had been digging his four year old daughter out of the earth. We know this because there was no choice, witnessing him burst his straining back, splitting spinal minor chords of both himself, as in parent and child, as in dead daughter. Now he lies fixed...
Garden lessons
There is more than one way of calling in the seed. A woman may sit in a garden of young blossoms showing their faces to sun for the first time, and wait for words to take root. Soil knows the spell of waiting just as the robin knows the right...
Ashes and diamonds
There are no diamonds in the ashes of despair. Anger writhes along each cortège as broken souls go down to brandished flags and guns. Hope seems lost.
Listening post
Silence is hardly pure. Life engenders Breathing aloud, spider steps, and white noise – Your nerves fretting to their own agendas – But there seems to be a spirit that employs What rises from near quiet. Just recall When Elijah, bloodied by raw righteousness, In hiding unclear how fate might befall, Heard...
The dance
Not like Matisse’s ‘Dance’, as Touch for now, is merely a hopeful thing, and for them, not a dancing ring of five; nor, it seems, just communal friendship, but something more: a longing to embrace, but never quite achieving that closeness.