The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks Flashcards
Blasphemy
“Stuck up here in this grotto, without as much as a star or planet to ease my vigil”
“Their prayers fly up like sparks from a bonfire that blaze a moment, then wink out”
Blasphemy - distances herself
“They call Mary - Blessed, Holy, Virgin. The fit me to a myth of a man crucified”
Pain
“Tress cavort in agony”
“Ghetto lanes where men hunt each other and invoke various names of God as blessing on their death tactics”
“I hear fish drowning”
Pain - crucifixion
“the scourging and the falling, and the falling again, the thorny crown, the hammer blow of iron into wrist and ankle, the sacred bleeding heart”
Nature
“Springtime, early summer. Girls in Communion frocks pale rivals to the riot in the hedgerows of cowparsley and haw blossom”
“O sun, centre of our foolish dance”
“Hear me and have pity”
Blasphemy - sexual desire
I would break loose of my stony robes”
“My being cries out to be incarnate, incarnate, maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed”
Ann Lovett
“The child who came with fifteen summers to her name, and lay down alone at my feet without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand and pushed her secret out into the night”
Criticism of Catholicism
“She cried out to me in extremis, I did not move, I didn’t lift a finger to help her, I didn’t intercede with heaven, nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear”
