Peter Stiles: The Beatitudes

The Beatitudes

On an early summer’s day in Prague

we step inside a gallery

exhibiting the work of Alphonse Mucha.

Reluctant to leave the tourist-traipsed city square below

our eyes take time, but then adjust to

the delicate pastel tones and lines,

walls of his detailed art nouveau.

Idealised, grace-filled female forms

in patterned, symmetrical beauty,

framed and arranged advertisements for

Cycles Perfecta and Théâtre de la Renaissance.

A chronology of carefully crafted meal vouchers,

selling a product to keep a man alive,

creative flourishes shaped for daily bread.

It is cool and quiet in this place.

As we pass from one gallery space to another,

forming our regard with comment and colour,

a series of simple, rustic vignettes,

“Blessed are” scenes with nothing to sell but their truth.

Even here, a displaced traveller,

The words of Jesus slice through my reality:

Blessed are the merciful,

     Blessed are those who mourn,

          Blessed are the peacemakers.

Today, in the hush of solemnity,

we visited the Jewish synagogues in Prague.

Killed with sneer and loathing

the ordered names (just names) of thousands of

children, men and women lined the walls of one.

Mucha himself, in 1939,

died soon after being “questioned” by the Gestapo.

Here, then, one fair city (for us, much awaited)

displays both the zodiacs of love and hatred.

Peter Stiles