The Scottish artist and writer Alasdair Gray is a poet, writer and artist. Gray completed a number of murals for Greenhead Church at Bridgeton in the east end of Glasgow.
In the poem “God Again”, Gray returns to the idea of creation as artistic process rather than divine fiat. If God made Man in his own image, Gray argues, then Man’s craving for “new life” and for admiration – which he satisfies through sexual reproduction and making works of art – reflects the creative urge that drove God to make Man and the Universe. (tls)
God Again
I brooded on dark water,
was neither fish nor bird,
an unembodied voice
that made all things by word,
made light, space, words and time
creatures that glow and grow,
bodies that shine above
and root, glide, creep below.
Seeing all this was good
I wanted creatures who
will share my admiration
of everything I do.
Though always bodiless
I have a certain form
so modelled it in clay,
gave breath to make it warm.
You are my image, folks,
greater than all you see
in intellectual scope,
but not as great as me.
Your dreadful faults, alas,
reflect what I desired:
a need to make new life,
a need to be admired.
New lives made with labour,
bodies requiring breath,
come to displace their makers,
condemning them to death.
I will not mend the faults
that generate your woes.
Mistakes can be creative too,
as every artist knows.
ALASDAIR GRAY (2002)
In the poem “God Again”, Gray returns to the idea of creation as artistic process rather than divine fiat. If God made Man in his own image, Gray argues, then Man’s craving for “new life” and for admiration – which he satisfies through sexual reproduction and making works of art – reflects the creative urge that drove God to make Man and the Universe. (tls)
God Again
I brooded on dark water,
was neither fish nor bird,
an unembodied voice
that made all things by word,
made light, space, words and time
creatures that glow and grow,
bodies that shine above
and root, glide, creep below.
Seeing all this was good
I wanted creatures who
will share my admiration
of everything I do.
Though always bodiless
I have a certain form
so modelled it in clay,
gave breath to make it warm.
You are my image, folks,
greater than all you see
in intellectual scope,
but not as great as me.
Your dreadful faults, alas,
reflect what I desired:
a need to make new life,
a need to be admired.
New lives made with labour,
bodies requiring breath,
come to displace their makers,
condemning them to death.
I will not mend the faults
that generate your woes.
Mistakes can be creative too,
as every artist knows.
ALASDAIR GRAY (2002)
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