Their God

Se VoL. XXIII

x

ie 0 etry No. VI

A Magazine of Verse

MARCH 1924

AT THE PRADO

THEIR GOD

] WONDER sometimes at their idea of God-these great

artists who painted for The Catholic Kings.

He is an old man-their God; a senile white-fringed man,

decaying visibly.

Rafael, as he shows Elizabeth visiting Mary, both large

with child,

Has a little flying God Almighty in the sky, carrying the

two unborn babies in his arms-

A little busy-body white-haired God, powerful as a moth,

he paints him.

Tintoretto's puny God looks worried, though poised in

Paradise at the top of things, above Jesus and Mary

and the adoring circles of saints-

How could they adore that God!

And Velasquez, who balked at gods, who made of Mars

a disreputable hard-boiled brainless bruiser, a

bruiser with big moustachios,

Even Velasquez had nothing to say about God-he

painted him bald-headed, decrepit, visibly abdi-

cating as he passed on the crown to Mary.

How would you paint God?

God, eternally young, young as the sun, young as Orion's

nebula.

God the Creator, stringing worlds like pearls in the sky.

God, molding our little earth after supper of the day he

had spread the Milky Way like a carpet for his feet;

Fingering forth men in millions with his right hand, and

beasts, birds, fishes with his left.

God, smiling at life as at a field of nodding flowers,

Finding its good and evil good.

God fecund, magnificent, glorious.

God of the love intolerable, love dark and bright, that

searches, challenges, rewards.

God, moving forever at the centre, with space like a thin

robe around him. '

God, facing his universe ever beginning and ending, and

calling it a day.

God of the blazing eyes that see.

God of the secret ears that hear.

"God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God."

How would you paint God?