This passionate series of engagements with the life of St Francis will stay in my mind for a very long time — I hope forever. Ann Wroe describes it as ‘A Life in Songs’, and it does, indeed, rehearse the familiar story of the rich young merchant’s son dispossessing himself, and giving his life to Christ so wholeheartedly that not only he, but the world, was transfigured. We revisit the kissing of the leper, the preaching to the birds, the founding of the order, the call of St Clare, the mission to the Middle East to bring peace to the Crusades, the gift of the stigmata. All these familiar events are rendered in a series of verses, sometimes metrical and rhyming, sometimes free.
The sequence of the sermon to the birds is especially successful:
They did not stir. Perhaps each phrase
slid off their smooth enamelled backs
like rain, like light. Yet, on one limb
set separately the wisest bird,
wide-eyed and cowled, weighed every word.
They are interlaced — and this is what makes the retelling of the Francis story so riveting — with a whole series of poetically captured snapshots of the contemporary scene. These modern episodes usually take place in London or Sussex — but not always. Sometimes we find the poet herself in modern Italy, following in the footsteps of the saint. Some of the juxtapositions are almost commonplace — Francis cuts the hair of St Clare on one page, and on the next, a schoolgirl has her hair plaited in modern Wimbledon — a very beautiful poem, that one.
A characteristic juxtaposition is found at the moment when Francis kissed the leper:
You hardly know
where in this scene you should belong,
distant or near,
staying or fleeing; fending off
contagious fear
with both imploring hands, or else
embracing it.
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