"Raiment" by Marilyn Longstaff (English Edition)
Raiment is a book about the ways in which we clothe our bodies and our spirits. It is a study in faith and disappointment, bras, knickers and the whole armour of God. According to the popular Easter hymn, 'Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away, / Kept the folded grave clothes where thy body lay.' For Marilyn Longstaff, the cerements in the vacant tomb are a symbol of spiritual mystery and an image of religious emptiness. She is a pilgrim, a stranger in a strange land, tempted by the guilty pleasures of the flesh and beset by a Puritan's consciousness of sin and injustice. These are poems about the flesh and the spirit, cheerfully balancing desire and loss, hope and failure and finding satisfaction in small pleasures in a world that contains no angels in bright raiment.