Mary speaks for herselfSpecula
By Alison Croggon
Visions of the world’s surface
First Vision
tv antennae rake carnivorous angel dislocate jangling arms heart chimes the clock measures sarcomas bulge the flickering heads of saints nothing more alive than this moment
Second Vision
I have savaged my skin I have slept in the shadows of rotting architectures eyes backward in my head I see deep into hell I divine the salt taste squamous on mylips I pluck the neon fruits germinating over this lying city I hold myself regretless and yet my hands punish me bristle in the tarmac to splinter my ramparts I flew into the nucleus of the sun and eyes burned out the fumigants await me with their cheap smiles earth old and full of her rebellion seeds swell under fingernails I am florescent again the rose of leprosaria
Third Vision
heart bends the weight of everything I have forgotten lingering in the stink of God’s breath my deathly Father walk where I am forbidden and birds speak to me darklytongues of flame I am the black blood breaking under the scourge I write this only because I am told flame bursts over the page and dessicates hands to ash how many chimneys have called how many bones how many pyres consumed how many how many voices I am not these words I am nothing I am not I am a name
Fourth Vision
no nothing never not because I am the axeman skulks in the sad carolling of foreign birds I was not the death of myself so much as the agony of beginning
Fifth Vision
perceive how the light splices the frost trees collect themselves saints depart from their niches childsight vanishes desire I have slept in my stench faint as an echo on the skin of night
Sixth Vision
might have been a voice but I negated my own possibilities the owl springs out of my mind she has abandoned me wakes between the night and the incurable hurts in the spaces by despair she extrudes huge wings and departs twilight is impassible my senses vanish I am the sweetness left by god in the inimitable desert where stones never weep all beginnings and all endings whoever waits has no face and I am lost I have been mortal once again there is nothing to save me
Of Margery of Kempe I
[T]he husband is his wife’s head, to rule her, correct her (if she strays) and restrain her (so she does not fall headlong). For hers is a slippery and weak sex, not to be trusted too easily. Wanton woman is slippery like a snake and mobile as an eel; so she can hardly beguarded or kept within bounds. Some things are so bare that there is nothing by which to get hold of them. . . . so it is with woman: roving and lecherous once she has been stirred by the devil’s hoe.
THIS CREATURE where thorw she lost reson and her wyttes
a long tym
setting all
hyr trost, alle hyr lofe, and alle hyr affeccyon in hym only
he comawnded hyr and charged hir
that sche shuld wryten her felyngys
the creature cryed often
[his eyn myssed so that he mygth not see
to make hys [hyr] lettre he set
a peyr of spectacles on hys nose]
ANNO DOMINE 1436
[and then yet it was wretyn fyrst be a man whech cows neithyr wel wryten]
she had a thyng in conscyens whech sche had nevyr schewyd
THIS CREATURE
went owt of hir mende
she knew no vertu ne goodnesse
thereof
sche bot hir owen hand so vyolently
and also sche roof her skin wyth her nayles spetowsly
THAN
syttyng upon her beddys syde lokying upon hir
how the eye openyd
as brygth as ony levyn and he stey up into the eyr fayr and esly
that sche mygth wel beholdyn hym in the eyr til it was closyd ageyn[sche wold not leevyn hir pride ne hir pompows aray
gold pypys on hir hevyd
Of Life’s Mys(t)eriesno wound so deep as the mind through menstrual stains to the brittle
sweat
skins of
I
it cracks they is
dry as dead
paper husks
you write
down
atrocity
you write up
you mouth
the bad taste blood you
SAY
the shattered
skeleton the ripped
vagina the
burned bone the rotting brain the gashed slitted cracked slashed
evidence
of wrong sex
wronged
so many words
said uttered lipped
fleshening circles of
being and
yet
in the cockeyed courtroom amid the testesments these
un-words
have HAVE BEEN HAD
have fallen like soft petals sweet
candied rosepetals decorative as grief as
swallowable as tears as liminal as any
metaphor
howlscriesbellowsululationsgroanswailsshrieksroarsbaysyelpssobsscreams keening
lamentations break
lips red lips red lips red
hands red breasts blue nails black teeth how digestible how they oil theeconomies remain in you
visible holeabsentsweetnothingscunts
The Unknown LanguageENGLISH LATIN LINGUA IGNOTAOf Margery of Kempe II
Man Homo Whose
God Deus Mouth
Sin Labia Kisses
Angel Angelus Wholly
Language Hymen Without
Reason Logos Fear
Rationality Ratio Is
Trinity Uno Luminous
Lust Desiderio Delight
Devil Diabolo Laughing
Ignorance Defututa Through
Master Magister Darkly
Nature Natura Wounded
Faith Fidelis Fingers
alle hir desyr was for to be worshepd of the pepul
and was on of the grettest brewers in the town
the ale was lost]
summe seyden sche was acursyd
WERE WROTH WITH HIR
sche herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable
the dette of matrimony was so abhomiably to hir that sche had levar
etyn and dryken the mukke in the chanel
punschyn and chastysyn hemself wylfully be absteyning
he used her as he had do before
he wold not spar
Having once tasted the spirit, she held as nothing all sensual delights until one day she remembered the time when she had been gravely ill and had been forced, from necessity, to eat meat and drink a little wine
he leyd beforn this creatur
the snar of letchery and in al this tyme sche had no lust to comown wyth
her husbond in the second year yt fel so that a man whech sche
lovyd wel seyd onto her he wold ly be hir
and have hys lust of hys body and sche schuld not withstand him
and evyr sche was labowred wyth the other man for to syn wyth hym
sche was ovrycoym and consentyd in her mend
and he seyd he ne wold
schamyd and confusyd in hirself
boldly clepe me Jhesus thi love for I am thi love and schal be thi love
wythowtyn ende
this creature
hir dalyawns was so swet that sche
gret plenté of terys boystows sobbyngys mornyggys and wepyngysunspekable
When you say your visions when you wake from sweat with the spearsdisgracing your entrails
You imagine me robed in blue with my face erased
And then the intolerable energy of stars in their expanding void
You leave my body beyond your sight
So only your moving lips can understand it
For I am like nothing which has been seen I am like everything
Forget the odium of comparisons I am
Quotidian and unique invisible and illuminated with the fingertips of despairing angels
Who forget heaven although they keep its photographs in their pockets
Dead gods suck at my every pore their mouths huge with oblivion
And within my skin a helium laughter
The sun playing on all my moving surfaces
That hurt your eyes when you open under your hair
You imagine a burning babe at my breast
And he too is laughing his ruddy body incandescent with mirth
You imagine the evergreen and covetous wings of birds of paradise
And slow petals of dawn exhaling predatory forests
And insolent rock quaking open and shut
You imagine my womb the sea’s impersonal darkness
Its populations of gut and fang and cold luminous lures
And its glowing coils of poisonous stone extruded from the heart
You imagine my breasts cusped by your longings
As my radiance dissolves your flesh and throws skeletal shadows
Over your lost faces
While I hold your hand in my two human hands
And bring it to my mouth
Margery of Kempe IIIFIRST she is humble and unworthy
In vehemence of spirit, almost as if she were inebriated, she began to loathe her body when she compared it to the sweetness of the Paschal Lamb and, with a knife, in error cut out a large piece of her flesh which, from embarrassment, she buried in the earth. Inflamed as she was, however, by the intense fire of love, she did not feel the pain of her wound
the prest whech wrot this boke
thei were ryche men, worshepful marchawntys and haddyn gold enow
(whech may spede in every nede) rewth that mede
schuld spede
er than trewth
God has nowhere to put his goodness, if not in me
thei wer most displeysyd
they cutted her gown so schort that it come but lytil
sche schuld ben holdyn a fool
ther is no gyft as holy as the gyft of lofe
and sumtyme yf sche sey a man had a wownde er a best whethyr it wer
er yyf a man bett a childe befor hir
er smet a hors er another best wyth a whippe
hir thowt sche saw owyr Lord be betyn er wowndyd
lyk as sche saw in the man er in the best
this creature
summe seyd it was a wikkyd spiryt sum seyd it was a sekenes
sum seyd sche had dronken to mech wyn
sum wuld she ben in the se in a bottumless
more ful of wowndys than evyr was duffehows of holys wondyrfully
turnyng and wrestyng her body
alas, alas for sorwe
sche wept sche sobbyd sche cryed so lowde
summe seyden that thei wold not go wyth hir for an hundryd pound
the cawse of hys malyce was for sche would not obeyn him
my derworthy dowtyr I schal nevyr forsakyn the
and yyf sche sey a semly man sche had gret peyn to lokyn on hymthe manhode of Crist
Dance of the Seven Veils
she dare not
she is diseased
her eyes dilate her fingers bleed her mouth simmers with juice
she cannot
contain herself she spills
modestly into the word
contingent as a virus
in the corpse of god
SECOND she locks her mouth
fast on the mouth of a man
his pen rivers her blood
over the margins
of god’s book
THIRD she is an ear
wet with song she is a cunt swollen
with god’s glory she is an eye
blistered with light she is skin
split by goading kisses she
is a stomach parched
to ecstasies she rakes off
her hair she is
the pure sex tolling
through cavities of blood
FOURTH she understands
how walls melt
in desire’s conflagration
FIFTH she sees her lover
perfected in death
rising to take her
perfectly unbodied
kiss
in his bloodied mouth
his dessicated skin
pearls and floods
with the salty waters
of her many tongues
SIXTH she is cast
into her freedom
her voice infects
the cloistered ear
her tumescence
returns she sleeps
slimed with sweat her tears
o’erspill the nightmare chalice
her lips rot her hands blaze with putrefaction her stink
fills the chapel with penitents
she is all parasite ingesting her own juices
her belly bloats and ulcers
with the fruit of god
she cries love
in the crowded streets
she is untouchable
SEVENTH she burns
on the pyre built
letter on letter
by god’s faithful servants
her blood boils
her eyeballs burst
her bones crack and char
naked
at last
in god’s great darkness
Of Margery of Kempe IV
Ah! Lord God! Who has written this book? I in my weakness have written it, because I dared not hide the gift that is in it.
sche nevyr tellyn how swet it wern many white thyngys
sweche sowndys and melodiis the fyer of love brennyng
voys of a lityl bird that song ful merily
thu schalt heryn that thu nevyr herdist thu schalt felyn
thu plesyn me so wel
I am alwey plesyd with the
thu mayest boldly when thu art in thi bed
take me to the as thi wedded husbond
as thi derworthy derlyng and thu mayest
boldly kyssen my mowth
my lofe is evyr redy to the
ne thu can han no other comfort but me only
whech am I
thi God
and am al joy and al blysse to the
To read the accompanying essay Specula: Mirrors from the Middle Ages
To read the interview with Alison Croggon.
