JANET KILLEEN offers an alternative to prose for meditation during Lent and into Easter Week. The Desert Shall Blossom: Poems for the journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Monday (Wild Goose Publications, £8.99 (£8.09); 978-1-80432-369-4) contains 28 poems, arranged into sections; and the largest group, nine, relate to Good Friday, drawing partly on the traditional Stations of the Cross, to “imagine the unimaginable”, such as “Veronica wipes the face of Jesus” and the falls of Jesus: “There were no angels here to bear him up, Just the rough wrenching of a legionnaire’s grip To set him on his feet again and smite him forwards.”