Art, Campaigning and Poetry

I had some free time this morning to go into Birmingham City Centre and explore; I was particularly keen to see the new Library. On the way there, I came across this statue in Victoria Square, in front of the Town Hall. It had been draped with a banner drawing attention to a campaign for Ladies Fighting Breast Cancer, and some tasteful pink lingerie had also been added to it. I thought it was a brilliant, eye-catching way to draw attention to their cause.

It wasn't until I stepped back from the statue a little, after taking the photo, that I saw there are some lines of poetry carved around the rim of the pool, in the middle of which the statue rests. They are from Burnt Norton by T S Eliot:

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

I was filled with a sense of wonder at how the images of the statue, the campaigners' additions to it and the words round the pool enclosing both came together so powerfully and (for me, at least) so movingly.