Kintsukuroi

Kintsukuroi –

“to repair with gold” the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken

I look back at the pictures of times

taken when we thought

that all was well

between us.

I try to re-enter the moment

Like Alice climbing inside

The doll’s house of the past.

But I do not fit.

I am tall with the present

Made large and clumsy by

A stature of too much knowing.

Would I wish to return?

To shrink down again

To the size of unknowing

and walk again by the round pond

Captured there on a wild day

Sparkling white on granite waves

Like a sea in turmoil.

No longer a park but a landscape.

The elements seemed to know.

And I rebel

Reverse on my nostalgic exercise

Remove myself from the scene

Where entry is so rightly barred.

The photograph deceives.

This moment is no longer in existence

And the person who encountered it

Is absolutely changed.

I valued and honoured everything

You gave me.

You took a machine gun to the life we led

But all the shrapnel,

falling from a brightening sky

I hold in my hand

And find it mended

By the light

Each piece miraculously sewn by

mercy

mine

and given by a gift Divine

I find has held the pieces fast

No longer old

This shape ceramic

here repaired by gold

Is Kintsukuroi

Now more beautiful

And open to the future

And the sky.

Sarah de Nordwall. 11th October 2015