Rhine water’s cloister veiled her
And choired through her veins,
Sure that bone would bloom
And the crowned skull sing.
Buried alive, death’s bride,
She swallowed the medicine
Of darkness, shocked into vision
By the wandering Elohim.
Hooded love held her in silk,
And proffered dark wines
To make her fly above the hills
And vineyards, crusader-queen
Of another Jerusalem, somewhere.
Disease and madness shook
Her little frame into rapture,
The barefoot child brought
Over cold stones to the altar,
A lighted taper in each hand.
Why did others not see what she saw?
Could they not feel pure flame
Scorch through to the marrow
And visit seed upon the womb,
The Virgin’s nectared honeycomb?
At the junction of two rivers
She broke the mind’s maidenhead,
Concocting physic for the unwhole,
And wedding-feasts of sound.
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