Hadewijch Of Antwerp, Mouth In Mouth In A Wild Desert,
                                       A Concordance

            Beguine, mistress of beguinage


knew her Middle Dutch, her mind like a flown letter,

in the season of darkness

( where darkness is   to bear fruit slowly)…
                                                                       
Because her deepest abyss is her most beautiful form,   this
was her calling, her bottom of the sea’s embroidered wardrobe from
its locked closets dragged out to the desert
where dying animals, like her body, refused food,

waited for rain. Ink bled from thorn and perfect flower

because, as then as now, to dream is to imagine inside a room
above the head, to   live in the same fervor  which makes   the stranger a neighbor,

each word a rough rock carried in the mouth for miles…

"For verily I say to you, 

I am fourteen visions, Visionenen   from    the madness of love

where I shall never   Unfree myself.  
                                                            From the course taken, from heat, sand
in the hair, mirage whose mirror is letter, where one might stray,
all lifted skirts of sky on fire, the years' split ribs,

there comes my brave love, my knight-errant to wonder at me,


            whatever she may be."