Life-and-Destruction                                                            Page 21

This intricate play of words creates a dazzling impression of movement and

light, gathering in all delight but also time and change, implying loss. The

repetition of "all things" is a chant, almost like a psalm or a canticle. It suggests

the great canticle from Daniel 3:57-88. All things in creation are praised in this

hymn to the divine:

you, sun and moon ...

you, stars of heaven ...

you showers and rain...

you, fire and heat...

The Maker gathers all the dynamism of things that glow and move, change and

pass and takes them into herself- a strong expression of union or communion.

She focuses them "in the crystal of my sense",¹⁶ that is, in her spirit, mind and

understanding and in the depth of her feeling. Given that this poem comes

directly after "Woman to Man", "Woman's Song", "Woman to Child" and

"Conch-Shell", all of which are centred on the body and physical life, and

given that the tree of life is in the "soil" or the body of the maker, it is

reasonable to suppose that when the poet refers to "sense" in 'The Maker" the

word includes not only abstract definitions but especially all bodily senses. The

light of sun, moon and stars pours through her senses and it is into her body-

centre that she takes "all things". Then, in what seems to be an almost

simultaneous movement, she releases them into life. She gathers all the forces

of life into herself not in order to keep them but to set them free:

I give them breath and life

and set them free in the dance.

In "Woman to Child" the child breaks free - "I wither and you break from me"

to "dance in living light". In "The Maker" freedom is given with breath and

life. The tension between freedom and unity is maintained in both poems.

Freedom is either taken or given without disrupting unity. Unity remains and

freedom is neither inhibited nor controlled.  The, tension between the closest

communion and the greatest freedom is symbolised in the "dance" of life with

its joy and pain, all of which is held and even "made" in the heart of the Maker.

¹⁶ "Sense" is more than "mind". In Latin the word "sensus" means "the faculty of feeling"

(from sentire: to feel), as well as the faculty of thought or meaning or understanding. In

biblical usage "mind" and "spirit" are interchangeable terms.