Forest Stations

 The picture is the Dalyson tomb in Laughton Parish Church, placed there by Judge Dalyson (whose grave site in the Cathedral illustrated the last post) in memory of his father and oldest brother (who had died within a short time of each other); he repurposed the brass of an earlier Dalyson for the top of the tomb.

I wasn't able to spend time with the Forest Stations in the Cathedral on Good Friday yesterday (it was closed to those not attending its services) so I spent time with them on-line instead, in the end shaping this:

I, II and III   Condemned, weighed down and collapsing

‘Relics of the true cross show it was made of ash, beech, cedar...’ (Twentieth Century satire)

Here are lacerations of makore, padouk, purpleheart, sabrianne, sapele, sycamore and walnut.

Occupying power capitulates,

loosing every mob’s rule of lynching lust,

jostling, crushing hope beneath the cross beam.

 

IV, V and VI   Mary, Simon and Veronica

‘Felled from the forest’s edge, ripped up from my roots, I saw his hasten eagerly’ (Anglo-Saxon poem)

Here vero-icon true-image is English sweet chestnut.

Yet love still echos through each fleeting grasp,

hope is hinted as each embrace shifts weight,

truth is imaged in each engaging myth.

 

VII, VIII and IX   Collapsing, weeping and collapsing

‘If they do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when it is brown?’ (Biblical text)

Here the guards are Indonesian ebony.

Until, a corner turned, the stake in view,

foreboding and playing is for ourselves,

while he, still jeered, is falling at the last.

 

X, XI and XII  Stripped, nailed and dead

‘At the last through wood and nails’ (Twentieth Century prayer)

Here the background to death is English oak split.

Everything he stood for is stripped right back,

all that remains stretched out, strained and displayed,

all that is crafted faulted and fractured.

 

XIII, XIV and XV  Taken, buried and gone

‘Beautiful tree, each crimsoned bough shouts your shame is gone’ (Sixth Century hymn)

Here is a single final piece of English elm.

Until there is only a dead weight left

quickly to be wrapped and hidden away,

an absence radiating a future.