The Lamb

By Linda Gregg b. 1942 Linda Gregg

It was a picture I had after the war.

A bombed English church. I was too young

to know the word English or war,

but I knew the picture.

The ruined city still seemed noble.

The cathedral with its roof blown off

was not less godly. The church was the same

plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out

of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.

All our desire for love or children

is treated like rags by the enemy.

I knew so much and sang anyway.

Like a bird who will sing until

it is brought down. When they take

away the trees, the child picks up a stick

and says, this is a tree, this the house

and the family. As we might. Through a door

of what had been a house, into the field

of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting

its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.

Source: Chosen by the Lion (Graywolf Press, 1994)

Biography

Born in New York, poet Linda Gregg was raised in Marin County, California. She received both a BA and an MA from San Francisco State University. Gregg has published several collections of poetry, including Too Bright to See (1981); Alma (1985); Things and Flesh (1999), finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry; and All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems, a Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of 2008 and winner of the . . .

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