To remember the calm, the tapestries at Musée de Cluny, 600 years old, their colours bright, leaves and flowers so specific you wonder at the weavers who made these wonders. The cartoons or drawings were created in Paris and the tapestries were woven in Flanders around 1511, using silks and wools dyed with rose madder, pomegranate, poppy, weld (or dyer’s rocket, for yellow), and woad. To stand in a room hung with them, to be quiet in their presence, to lean close to see the gillyflowers, primroses, little bellis daisies, poppies as delicate as any growing in a spring garden, to take in the beauty and the skill. I brought back a sprouting acorn from France, wrapped in damp kleenex, and I wonder if its mother tree was related to this one, each leaf so perfectly formed, coloured, created by many hands weaving the weft threads over and under the warp. Listen to its leaves, breathe in the scent of gillyflower, wild violets, strawberries ripening, listen as the bunnies are listening, someone is singing, softly, and it’s one of my favourite poems on earth.
Westron wind, when will thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
...Theresa Kishkan 