Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Scenes
from a Funeral Home Calendar Featuring a Decidedly English Jesus
“It’s pretty, but is it Art?”
-the Devil in Kipling’s “The Conundrum of the
Workshops”
Jesus and his followers appear to be
on sabbatical from Oxford
Strolling along in a peaceful
English world
Among perfect climax-forest English
oaks
Under a dreamy English summer sky
Young Mary plays with placid English
lambs
In an English meadow all flowered
and green
Anna and Simeon prophesy in an
English temple
The Centurion is as English as a Grenadier Guard
For a child (me) who grew up on a
farm in poverty
Realism in pastoral art just won’t
do, you see!
(And, really, we can’t have young
Jesus
Skipping among sheep droppings, now
can we?)
