Poetry by Sister Mary Agnes

Draft of a Long Poem, 1972

For more information on Sr. Mary Agnes see:

https://seeingnorthlight.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-memory-of-pamela-chalkley-sister.html

My lighting streaks the magnetic furnace

seared white, fused, melted in its source

seeming inseparable

the 2 units, confused so intimately

as to be indistinguishable

veined and tissued, one…

Why this surmounting power of a gull

beating the clouds’ crests, breathless

(his shadow feather-soft below)

why the sudden simultaneous collapse

the larval swirl, contrasted I-negation

this cold knowledge;

my form lying in the dark, unconscious earth

my bone of that same substance as this crumbling stone

my thought-flashes like these drying tongues

of leaves in late sun

            I who have shed acid tears

over my incompetence through inauspicious years

have as well

hearing the first sun call

light from behind the hill

bidden a power arise through eyes

which had otherwise been bitter seas

discovered I had mastered these

harvested abundant crops, then scattered again

profusely, like sun-grain

to feed a barren land

or like a veil of soft rain…

they fell on rock, unresounding, hit back

with a shock-donation of pain

Followed no hope, only the death of hope

a long delay in trust

watching each letter torn from a new day’s envelope

to discover

no word from the desired, the lover:

numbed to stone by grey mid-day

dried to bone when a faint sun

closes one half-opened lid-

no hope this, nor requiem for a departed hope

but a condemnation to perpetual annihilation.

Who drew so suddenly juice from my being

what mouth had sucked voraciously

left a discarded skin?

      for all my glow was gone

                         that lit from within

who tore the leaves from their rich crown-

reared but a twisted bone of thorn

desolate of song

Suspend no longer this you-me-encounter

needing neither violence for affectation of expression

You, before me, in perfection

I, an erratic spark, the flicker of a star

fed from your combustion;

that occasional other

whom from time to time I recognize

(mar more frequently in my imagination)

give me to see his reality

which shines before you, erect in beauty

so that I may love him

when your sun sets over me, a radiant dove

golden on her nest

and the time for words shall cease

timeless in rest

Draped in your folds

nights falling images

construct symbolic pyramids

death’s broken triangles, cold on the face

held closer than close

your nearnesses encompass more than space

fly into sunset distances the bird-winged breaths

down silver slates, the falling moon

the blood-faced moon, approaching motionless

volcanic dragons smoulder in its breath

So is this form, your formless pace

unmeasured by the inches of my grace

                        Sister Mary Agnes

                                (Pamela Chalkley)

                        copyright©Dick Russell

                                      2018