Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by poet Laura Purdie Salas, HERE. Thank you, Laura, for hosting.
What is Poetry Friday. Find out HERE.
I’d like to celebrate a museum today: The Cloisters, in New York City.
My husband, Bart, and I happened to be in the NY suburbs visiting family and on a Sunday morning, drove across the GW bridge to one of our favorite places. It is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sits in northern Manhattan, close to the bridge, in Fort Tryon Park.
The museum displays medieval art including the seven Unicorn tapestries, woven in the late 1400’s.
The unicorn, of course if a legendary creature with a single horn protruding from it’s head. To some, the unicorn is the symbol of Christ and its pursuit and capture a metaphor for the crucifixion and resurrection. For others, the tapestries are explained by some as an allegory of marriage, the devotion and subjugation of love.
However you interpret them, through Christianity or culture, the tapestries are amazing. For instance, according to Wikipedia, in the background are 100 different plants, 85 identified by botanists. That’s a lot of detail! At the Wikipedia site, you can view the seven tapestries.
Unicorn in Captivity, the last of the series of seven tapestries.
I always learn something at every museum. One thing I learned at the Cloisters was that the tusk of the narwhal whale was thought my many to be that of a unicorn.
Such tusks, ten feet in length, when found were safeguarded in churches from London to Cracow. One such tusk, in France, was said to have been given to Charlemagne, according to a museum plaque. Other prized unicorn horns were gifted to San Marco of Venice, Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy and other deserving fellows.
A Narwhal tusk or, if you prefer, a unicorn horn, displayed in the corner of the tapestry room
What do you think? Is it love/marriage or religion, or today, government gone amok that has placed this beautiful unicorn inside a fence? Here’s a tanka:
I WONDER
Love or religion?
A lovely animal fenced--
medieval, me thinks.
Who made the fancy collar?
Why fence an innocent in?
©Janice Scully 2025
Image from Freepic
Thank you for hosting, Laura!
This museum has been on my wish list for a long time. I need to go next time I’m in NYC. Thank you for sharing!
You’ll love it. Put it on your to do list:)
Thanks for sharing so much, Janice, from what must be a spectacular exhibition! I love that you followed its trail into our country’s own challenges in your poem! “Why fence an innocent in?” We have a few answers for this, don’t we?
Thanks for sharing this, Janice. Fabulous! I’d love to see a narwhal tusk in person (though a “found” one, not a hunted down one–I don’t know the history of this one). We always seem to want to fence things in, but the things we find amazing, to make sure we don’t lose them, and the things we abhor, to…protect ourselves from them? The problem (for me) is WHAT certain people find abhorrent. Sigh. Thanks for this thoughtful post. When we’ve gone to Scotland, we enjoy seeing unicorn things, since it’s their national animal. Makes me extra love that country.
Thanks for reading! I was is Edinburgh for two nights ten years ago and loved Scotland. I have a Scottish wool blazer I bought in a second hand shop to remind me. So much interesting history there.
Thanks for reading! I was is Edinburgh for two nights ten years ago and loved Scotland. I have a Scottish wool blazer I bought in a second hand shop to remind me. So much interesting history there.