The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
 |
| The Behemoth and The Leviathon William Blake |
The Almighty lords it over Job, pointing –
in Blake’s illustration – to his creatures.
Bear-like, ponderously cowed, the behemoth
slavers piteously, musculature carved in stone
or maybe ice.
There is an immobility to god’s demon
which strikes you as less a threat of war
and more an image of a beaten dog –
and writhing beneath in symbolic fury
the leviathan, spitting lava and seething
impotently from his watery wave, has a fiery eye
but limbless,
seems doomed to roiling magnificently –
You do not doubt the immediate effect
but rather the literal application
for land and sea, one nothing without the other,
both plundered beyond even an aged god’s redemption.
Day 10 ~ CREATURES
Anmol is our host in The Imaginary Garden today, with his prompt idea: Open a Book. The sentence I found from an anthology of modern poets, specifically my muse poet of the week, is the one quoted above by Marianne Moore.
I am also revisiting Blake's works this week, so my second source of inspiration is his Illustrations of the Book of Job.
