Our Lady of Wooden Comfort
- Virgin and Child, Northern France
Early to mid-fourteenth century, Wood
The Menil Collection, Houston
Just here beside pale Cycladic
figures and Coptic tapestry
transposed from other age and place
she spreads her giddy grin open-
mouthed across a youthful wooden
face, her arms lovingly embrace
a headless Christ. Her hips are thrust
upward to bear the Child’s weight.
Her belly rises plump and round
under carved folds of gown, and down
her middle runs a rift that rends
breast from breast—linea nigra
in negative space, scar from time’s
scalpel having as it were pierced
her heart and side, lancet through which
her God has sprung half-formed yet full
of favor, fingers folded, hand
held in heedful benediction.
Time-rent she smiles seeing still
the face beyond our knowing.
Acknowledgement: “Our Lady of Wooden Comfort” was first published in Weber: The Contemporary West (Vol. 37.1).
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