Sunday, November 18, 2012

I bet you didn't expect to see a poem about the virgin mary on this blog, now did you?

I can't fall asleep (despite having cut down on caffeine!) yet am too tired to read case-law in Hebrew (i.e. do my homework) so I've been going through my inbox, deleting various things.

I stumbled across this ballad about the Virgin Mary, which is an ecphrastic piece based on a painting of the Virgin of the Walters Art Museum. It was an assignment for a class taught at JHU by Pamela Kirpatrick.

I thought it was fun and decided to upload it:

Bordello Mary: strawberry lips
and sweet almond-eyes.
Behind the white gauzy virgin’s veil,
she fills men with surprise.

God in a rush of white wings:
saying Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus
anointed in shattered-latex dreams,
hands are cradling thighs.

Plucked eyebrows, golden hair,
burnished robe of roses.
Green mantle and silver star,
creases under eyes.

When he glided away, your feathered
fingers full of surprise,
did you know that day that from you
the world’s glory would rise?

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