#geneva window

Harry Clarke, Geneva Window, panel no. 5, which offended President William T. Cosgrave. 

Caption for Panel 5:

And now they pause in their dancing And look with troubled eyes, Earth’s straying children With sudden memory wise. 

‘The Others’ by Seumas O’Sullivan (published in Padraic Colum’s Anthology of Irish Verse (1922)) The seventh verse of the haunting poem by the artist’s friend and fellow editor on The Dublin Magazine provides Clarke with the image of a  ‘young maiden…of mortal birth,/ her young eyes laden with dreams of earth’, borne through the whispering twilight in a shimmering starlit dress by ‘a youth/ entranced – his brave/ lost feet enchanted with/ the rhythm of fairy sound.’ His minimal pink costume and provocative right hand caused more official consternation than the tiny, phosphorescent, naked ‘elfin crew’ dancing behind them. (x)