Rembrandt van Rijn ‘Flora’ ca 1654
The Elohim
Roy Fisher
Blake drew the guilt of God,
showed him at his compulsion
in plain view; past the moment
of holding back and not
forcing the universe
to break into matter from the void;
by the very act obliged
for a while to be
imaginable, all the world
hurrying into being
and looking on.
Blake, on behalf of Adam,
put the secret question everybody has:
‘How was it, that particular minute
when I was made?’
And stained Eternity
with common answers. “Troubled.
At cross-purposes. Recklessly aware
as to consequence. Streaked through
with the sense of something
suddenly and forever lost’.
Rembrandt van Rijn ‘Hendrickje Stoffels’ 1650
