i am a little church

The painting was done on holiday in Austria in summer 2010, inspired by one I saw by Reinhold Stecher in a small booklet called 'Der Rosenkranz, ein kleines Plaedoyer'

The poem i am a little church is by e e cummings. I thnk they go together rather well

i am a little church(no great cathedral)


far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities


—i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,


i am not sorry when sun and rain make april



my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;


my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving


(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children


whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness



around me surges a miracle of unceasing


birth and glory and death and resurrection:


over my sleeping self float flaming symbols


of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic


world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature


—i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;


i am not sorry when silence becomes singing


winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to


merciful Him Whose only now is forever:


standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence


(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)



"Poem 77" from 95 Poems (1958), p. 749