Curlicue, by Jill Sharp

Lindisfarne Gospels, Eadfrith (England) 720

Curlicue

for the unknown maker of the Lindisfarne Gospels (possibly Eadfrith)
 
You’re old, no longer fit
for heavy labour – though stretching
a calfskin membrane, keeping it weighted
on the slope is work enough –
and you spend all your days
in the scriptorium, pricking out and ruling
the vellum pages – lightly, or pigment
puddles in the grooves – so many
words to a line, lines to a page,
and now you become a geometer,
with compass and dividers
following the principles of design
by which Creation may be understood,
where the work is a meditation,
every flex of the quill, stroke
of the nib demanding
your full attention, and you find
great possibilities in the script,
a blend of runic and Roman
through which you inscribe
a moment when cultures change,
and, living in troubled times,
to illuminate the Word
is a daily devotion,
so you never think of claiming
the work with a signature
or imagine that scholars will ever
seek clues to your name.

Jill Sharp

Jill Sharp's poems have appeared most recently in The Frogmore Papers, Poetry Salzburg Review, London Grip and Orbis. She has published a pamphlet, Ye gods (Indigo Dreams) and is featured in a six-poet collection, Vindication, from Arachne Press. She was runner-up in the 2020 Keats-Shelley Prize and was a Hawthornden fellow in 2023.