Look at the sky, that vast expanse;
The mottled, dappled, mackerel sky;
The canopy for past romance
Where lovers wept their last goodbye.
Or burning blue, without a flaw,
So they, like we, might clearly feel
The scything sharpness of the Law;
Hard as a mirror cast in steel.
On other days to show His power
He made the lion and its prey,
But for the backdrop of this hour
He made the sky for one whole day.
I was struck that in the beginning of Genesis while creating the universe in six days, creating on the 6th day all living creatures (the lion and his prey by metonymy), God devoted a whole day to creating the sky, so it must have been important. I then thought of two of the sorts of sky we see in England, one with clouds as a backdrop to the Fall from Adam's point of view as the lovers (Adam and Eve, loving each other and loving God) weep their last goodbye, and the second cloudless sky where everything is sharp to define the expulsion from the garden from God's point of view - clearcut, precise and absolute. Hard as a mirror cast in steel is a near quotation from Job 37:18 "Hard as a mirror of cast bronze" and the theme is in Job 37:13 "he brings clouds to punish men".
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