This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Sarah Law.
St John Vianney
He beckons from his alcove –
it’s warm, like a cardiac chamber
plush with blood, carnation red –
offering the moon-white host
above a silver cup. The moment
stills me, its sliver of eternity
paused beyond liturgical refrain.
Unlike the martyrs, he’s old –
grey-haired, and neatly robed.
They say he sat whole days in the confessional,
shedding tears over his penitents
who gathered, snagged by love, into his fold.
They say he was demon-tormented –
weathering their ravages; forcing back
the worst of them by uttering the Word.
O threshold soul, ascetic and persistent –
I am looking for your likeness in the living.
Should I trust you with my worries, I am certain
you would whisper back: behold.
Sarah Law lives in Norwich, UK, where she is an associate lecturer for the Open University. She edits the online Amethyst Review, a journal for new writing engaging with the sacred. She is a published poet, with six full length collections and contributions in various journals and anthologies. Her collection, Therese: Poems, was published by Paraclete Press in 2020. Her novel, Sketches from a Sunlit Heaven (Wipf and Stock, 2022) is a 2023 Illumination Book Award silver medal winner. Her essay on Julian of Norwich and the City of Norwich, ‘The Soul A City’, has been selected for inclusion in the Orison anthology of Best Spiritual Literature 2023.
