This poem is taken from PN Review 224, Volume 41 Number 6, July - August 2015.
Two Poems
The Monk and the Margin
| The most holy saint, both before and after her death, performed many notable miracles; would that the warming of this scriptorium had been among them. I trace gold letters with blue, numbed fingers. It is reported for a truth that roses would spring up where she walked. My window is etched with frost-flowers. | Little devils apply toasting-forks
to the toes of the damned. A flying dragon blows the winter forest from white to red. | |
| She had taken a vow of chastity and, being threatened with marriage, embarked with fifty maidens in a small boat, in which they fled to preserve their virtue. Which the LORD approving, brought them through many storms to an island, where the boat was wrecked, but them He saved alive, and untouched of man. | Among the waves do fish and
dolphins and all the creatures of the sea couple with such joy, they leap from my pen. | |
| On this island was no sustenance, nor had they the means of fishing, but the LORD caused great shoals of fish to leap from the sea, and the stones of the beach became hot, so that they were cooked as they landed. So too caused He a dead tree to grow heavy with all manner of fruit. Today is a fast day. My head is light; I am so empty, I could fly. | A fox wheels a barrow of apples.
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