Agnes Meadows God’s paintbrush
At the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s Masterpiece, Barcelona, January 2020
And I stepped inside, overwhelmed already By the honeycombed spires which needled clouds Kissed by the harp-string of angel’s breath, By the intensity of patterned stone on stone, Intricate carvings so dense it was hard to distinguish Head from torso, a rising undulation, a coil, a whiplash, A turbulent rubric of blooms and creatures both. I stepped inside, and my breath was snatched away By the sheer immensity of rising pillars confronting me, A forest of trunks worn smooth by multitudinous hands Seeking salvation, a supplication of branches Expressing the eternal alphabet of faith all overlaid By the low rumbling undercurrent of human voices, A burgeoning leaf-fall of prayers eddying To a ceiling distant as Heaven itself. Red glass flamed along one wall, the heat Of madness translated into vitrine inspiration, While other panes mosaiced the ocean’s swell, The marriage of sea and sky in swathes of blue and turquoise, As if Neptune’s very spirit had been captured And held fast within Aurora’s never-ending clutch, Each window an elemental celebration of life within life. This was beauty solidified, as if Bird song and bell chime, summer laughter And the soft glance of lovers at midnight had All been brought there to sleep within the stone’s embrace ‘Til woken by the Architect’s soft celestial kiss. And seeing all this, this panoply of beauty, it was easy To believe in the Almighty, however invisible or inscrutable, And to ponder if Gaudi had, indeed, been God’s paintbrush.
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