Poetry Wednesdays: The Holy Grail
A Poem from The Green Man by David Russell Mosley
Today’s poem comes my debut collection, The Green Man. This collection is a series of poems organized primarily around the four seasons with sections for saints, creation, and sin.
"The Holy Grail" Who held the holy Chalice that caught his blood Blended with the shimmering Water of Life, Catching it, this strange admixture rife With all the active potency of the Good? And who was washed in this outpouring flood, Made into the Bridegroom’s new found wife, Washed away from pain, from death, from strife And into the paradisal garden wood? It was the Earth who received the Blood and Water, And the Green Man carried it through the flowers, The trees, through all living things without fail. He bore the Chalice he became the Altar; Christ spreading through everything by his greening power, And so the Earth became the Holy Grail.
The Holy Grail as it appears in Arthurian literature has always been of interest to me. But this poem reflects more on Sergei Bulgakov’s essay The Holy Grail. In that essay he posits that the true chalice which caught the blood and water from Christ’s side was the earth itself. Taking that idea, I wanted to put it into verse and connect it to the notion of the Green Man that pervades the book in which this poem appears.