To the Queen of Heaven & inspired by Eliot’s Sunday Morning…

“Young Mary of the sky-blue cloak,
The lily hands, the dusty feet-
Indefectible awoke,
From her soul’s noetic heat.
She held an angel in her eye,
She spoke the flame with Seraphim-
Interchanging earth and sky,
Shock the changeless Cherubim.
Sublunar Eve in Lim cried out
To see her motherhood respire.
Mary’s prayer upon her brow
Burns with a kenotic fire.
The remonstrance ungilded stood
Before the angel of the Host-
Across the shadowed twisty-wood
Moved a many-colored Ghost.

Paley rose in petals torn
Sprang up within a heart unbound-
Beyond old suns, a rose-gold morn
Moves with us, our God around.
I fell asleep last night and feared
Destroying winds in sphered wheels.
The Lady pure in prayer appeared
Before the angel’s eyes of steel.
God’s heralder unblinds his gaze,
And dolefully unbinds his sword.
He snaps it and before her stays,
Contemplating ancient words.
Across deep heaven’s blue-dark sea
Still sparkling with great Gabriel’s wake,
In golden hours, by silver tree,
A slender youth the fruit shall take,
And eating some, will cast the rest
About our world as he falls dead,
Sinking swiftly with the West,
Rocked in seeming changeless red.
But Mary has a faith that’s swift-
It outruns all the angry dead,
So from the angel’s upward lift,
Her wide eye feeds her heart instead.
The Word is done, the song is winged,
The deeds are named, the Glory burns,
A little maid of clay will bring
The star on which all turns.
Turn, Lady, that your cloak is winged.
Sigh, Lady, that your prayer is thus.
Sing, Mary, with only your eyes,
Breathe out the rainbow out of dust.