Cathar Castles

Dew on the grapevines

in the Aude valley,

among the beeches and pines;

through narrow gorges,

vaginas of the Goddess,

under hermit caves.

Climb through privet and scrub oak

to Puilaurens,clinging

to the limestone,

up to the crenellated walls.

The people dug their fingers

into this earth,and cultivated

each other’s bodies

to feel the joy

that troubadours chanted

in the green bird tongue.

Only in that Bible

was there revelation.

A ghost,they say,

patrols these ruins:

the lady Blanche of Bourbon,

wife of King Peter the Cruel,

who smothered her to death

when beauty had outlived usefulness.

Along the north wall

the latrines remain,

where elegant courtiers-

Lucifer's angels-

would bare their white bums

over the vertiginous abyss.


Quèrebus on its limestone pinnacle:

hallucination luring you upwards

on steps hewn from the rock;

the wind can blow a man

straight off the mountain.

In the keep’s core you circle

the Gothic chamber-

solar sanctum of the imagined Grail-

and in the dank passages

and gloomy chambers illuminated

only by arrow-slits,

you feel the terrible heaviness

that stimulates flight.