The Quest for Sacrament in David Jones’s Poem, ‘A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS’

Abstract

David Jones' iconic, short poem, "A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS" dramatises the search for the sacramental amidst artefacts that typify modern man and his epoch. In this essay, I seek to show how Jones's poem, itself a modern artefact, invites its readers to emulate the poet's search for the sacramental within the lines of its own composition. Jones's art works invite us to practice this mode of loving attention elicited by their nature as sacramental signs, and mey endlessly reward mis patient, extended engagement; there are ever more layers to be discovered. My own "questful" reading of Jones's poem here precedes by way of attending to its visual and typographical aspects-not unlike one of Jones's painted inscriptions which traverse this boundary between word and image. By thus exploring the arranged lines or "textures and contours" of "A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS," I suggest we see how, in this poem that appears to be a desolate wasteland devoid of divine presence, "His symbol" may yet be discerned in its very shape. I thus conclude that Jones's poem does not simply cast itself in despair amidst the rubble of the modern wilderness but, precisely by asking the question of the wasteland, provides a way through it.