A Pre-Raphaelite Notebook - poem by Geoffrey Hill

This is one of the most haunting and evocative poems by Geoffrey Hill, and I read it during my awakening to the importance of art as well as the convergence of art and poetry that opened up to me the richness of pre-modern art history. The poem is from the collection Tenebrae, printed in 1978.


A Pre-Raphaelite Notebook



Primroses; salutations; the miry skull
of a half-eaten ram; viscous wounds in earth
opening. What seraphs are afoot.

Gold seraph to gold worm in the pierced slime:
greetings. Advent of power-in-grace. The power
of flies distracts the working of our souls.

Earth's abundance. The God-ejected Word
resorts to flesh, procurescarrion, satisfies
its white hunger. Salvation's travesty

a deathless metaphor: the stale head
sauced in original blood; the little feast
foaming with cries of rapture and despair.