The Holy Mother Group

Four poems exploring the tensions between individual and group, inspiration and tradition.

To move to the start of a poem, click on the title: "Of Gathering"   "Of Martyring"  "Of Cloistering" "Of Pilgrimage" To return to the list of poems, click here: R. S. Carlson's Poetry Pages

Of Gatherings
(To the Female Prophet)

Holy Mother,
Ave.
Care for your canon:
it enthralls.

You say you only testify?
True,
but you are remembered -- worded -- beatified:
the saying is the sainting;
the said, the sanctified.

Look to your canon:
it enthralls.

Forgive my dribbling
your sweet wine in my beard;
and if my beard is unforgivable,
forgive, at least, my wish to sip --
though uninitiate --
that kind of your eucharist.

Take me for a doddering Samuel, now,
-- first a gift of the sexless to the barren,
returned as first fruit to the shrine
to be acolyte to old Eli:

-- childly upright,
an innocent who heard a voice in the night
in a shrine,
and had to be told
not to answer to a man;

-- an altarboy
who had the rules by rote,
and tattled to the greyed Pater
of the priest-sons'
extorting the best offerings at the doorway,
and taking the loveliest women
in the pillared court;

-- a small prophet
given unwieldy word of death;

-- a boy, devout and fearful,
compelled to answer to a patriarch --
fat, devout and failing --
who knew a voice had spoken;

-- then, when doom fell true,
successor to prophet role
for tribes familiar with hollow texts
and tunes of priestly corruption;

tribes which cried to be a kingdom
till a voice
gave a name,
and I poured holy oil on a head,

then watched the young king
snatch at power, and prophecy, and priesthood --
early, searching for voice,
then steadily deafening

until
I heard the voice,
poured oil on a shepherd's head
and waited.

So much for me, Holy Mother.
Look to your canon.

Ours, you know, is much memorized:
so yours will be:

many mouths taste of something more than text
and less than truth;

when a mouthful is all that can be managed,
the metaphor conveying truth
becomes the truth itself;

the life struggling to be born
at the womb's mouth of language
takes an image:

the image iconifies to letters;
the word ritualizes to law;

so, to the inescapable icon
come scribes to schematize,
artisans to adorn
till brilliant breath stands immured
with scrolleries of convention.

What are you now in first passion?
Does your gathering tell a whole joy?

Ours tells for today and for always,
though many look to the telling
with one eye or the other closed;
ours tells impartial love for the partial,
though many ignore the paradox,

and we tend to hawk tickets
for orchestra, box and loge
at invitational performances
of a polished tear
or a comfortable custom.

Who are your chosen people?
We have two strains entwined:
the born and the broken.

Among them, of course, orders and clans
convene, combine, contend
and divide,
taking exception to one another's exclusions --

for a suppliant does not always know to present,
nor a healer always know to bind
the greater wound;

nor the singer know her own deafness,
nor the silk seller see his torn hem;

sister and brother cannot always hear
their names lilted in old dialect;

and the same anthem,
mother-clear at the altar,
echoes oddly
down the aisles of cathedraling time.

Does your tribe in-gather the outcast?
Cherish the gathering warmth,
and hone cautiously
the blade of young convert zeal;

the cutting edge of tear-tempered righteousness
guts and quarters blood sacrifice swiftly;

I count many scars
on my slowing hands.

Does your creed declare an evil?

Some looking into our scriptures
find an incarnate devil
generating all wrong;

I find this devil
consistently steals mirrors;

some see sin as infertility --
life worst profaned
in the barren mind,
the fruitless soul.

Does your community celebrate a eucharist of one kind?
Well, what does that matter,
if you know why?

Passion is as well celebrated
in the spilled as in the broken.

Ave, Holy Mother.
Care for your canon.

Can you nurture your joy to resist
too quick a catechism?

How your wine sparkles now.
Can your stronger novices see
the grape is not the vine,
the vat is not the press,
nor the decanter the aging cask,
nor the sparkling wine the full communion?

However devoutly engraved the silver cup,
the drink too long in the chalice
only slakes the thirst
of a hand's breadth of the vineyard path.

Can the converts trim the icons
and still attend the voice?

Ave, Holy Mother --
may we meet again as feast days allow?

Perhaps
come winter?

Of Martyring

Ave, Holy Mother.
Peace be with you in your pilgrimage.
No, I have no questions now.

Yes, when litanies read
in strange dialects,

when vestments are hung
in different hues,

when creeds proclaim
the poles of a paradox,

the true believers will
inevitably kill --

mud for the miter,
and a miter for the mud;

find a plan of God,
and define a God of Plan.

How steadily we move
from ecstasy to altar,
from altar to walled shrine,
from walling in to walling out:

from deliverance
to defence,
to destruction.

Still, live utterly, Holy Mother,
live all your deity provides;

for, of all we would embrace in our travels,
many we can never touch;

some we must let grow away,
for we -- and they --
are already walled up in flesh;

and of the faithful we hold close,
struggling for voice --

those we do not stab
we may smother.

Of Cloistering

Ave, Holy Mother.

Do you suppose we could ever escape
our old competing cloisters?

Our competition is easily proved
by a stroll through the marketplace.

Dress me as a brother in your habit,
your apparent chaplain,
and we shall hear from public lips
how fair, how true
and literally divine
are the maxims
and the distortions
of your confession:

how lethal, how pernicious
the myths of mine.

Dress you as a sister
in traditional orders
to walk with me,

and we shall hear
how fair and true
and literally divine
are the maxims
and the distortions
of our confession:

how blasphemous, how lethal
the tenets yours tenders.

What resort is there
when new insight has grown to new order?

When new heartcry has roused
an increasingly tonedeaf chorus?

When the native thrill of collective chant
has drowned the sense of the words?

Could we escape to search again
for the voice we heard start these earthbound echoes?

Do you suppose, Holy Mother,
you and I could escape
our comfortable cloisters:

set aside the matriarchal wimple
the patriarchal cap;

fold our cliches
over the backs of our gilt sanctuary chairs;

hang our biases
on brass pegs in the vestibules;

cut away the roles and customs
(so long ago sewn to our skins for penance)
to drop beneath the roses by the garden path

while we,
bleeding and naked,
clamber over the garden walls
and bolt unnoticed
for the wild wood --

possibly to cross each other's trails,
possibly to meet in new-scarred nakedness,

possibly drawn together
by the common search for the heart of the wood
where we once walked with the voice
in cool evening?

Somehow, Holy Mother,
I fear we have
still too many festivals to bless;
still too many confessions yet to hear;
still too many processions through the town to lead;
still too many pious retreats behind
still too many cloister walls
still too high for climbing.

Yet there are times when, for me,
the persona wears through to the person;

the vestments lose luster in the dusk;
the hair shirt itches in the night,

and, as I turn on my cot,
breaks loose from the stitching.

Then, up with the pale moon
after midnight prayers,

I stand at my small cell window
and face the wild wood,

listening,
listening . . .

and though the valley between
is wide and dark,
I sometimes think I can make out
the walls of your cloister,
and the outline of your cell window
where, it seems,

a shadow stands,
facing the wild wood,

listening,
listening,

too . . . .

Of Pilgrimage

Now, Pilgrim,
wish the Holy Mother well,
and follow the mountain trail --
still seized by the mystery.

On the far hills,
the Holy Mothers, the Holy Fathers
gather their faithful
to festivals in the cloister churches.

There the icons shine,
never dim with candle smoke;

plaster eyes weep;
brass hands move in blessing;

believers are confirmed in ecstasy.

Why did you disturb the priest
polishing icons at midnight
in his sleep?

Why didn't you give thanks
for the sponge and tube
behind Madonna's head?

Why did you cut the threads that ran
from the patron saint's arm
to the treadle under the altar?

The cloisters on the far ridgeline
glow with torchlight.

At this distance,
the festivals have no voice.

Here in the wood,
naked flesh meets the wind,
vested only with scars
where old stitching torn open
heals over.

Here the incense of earth and air
rises in evening rain.

Wind chants among the leaves.

Clouds in purple
shift to break a brief wafer of light
over the mountain.

Lips taste of sweat.

The eye watches the path
dissolve in dusk.

Ahead,
through the syllables of wind
rising in high trees,

the ear catches
a settling of wings.

R. S. Carlson

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