Virgin a Day - #3

(Image from here)

The Black Madonna 

    

"You're interested in me," she says,
jabbing thumb to chest. My legs
twitch, threaten to buckle
as if I were watching my house
swim into flame. She is black as
Our Lady of Czestochowa, old
as Mary taking leave of earth
at Ephesus. Hand to hip, impatient,
she taps her foot. She is waiting
for me to see the woods.

This madonna carries no baby, wears
no veil. In the crook of her arm
sways a cracked leather purse
hefty as a club. The print
of her dress climbs with
bearded irises and her eyes are
fierce and bloodshot—she's
had no sleep in days, or maybe she drinks.

I hold my ears,
but her voice burning through my hands
is a torch lighting up
the place of the skull.

She's telling the trees
everything: how I cling to what's in front of me
and keep missing the point,
like Francis when he hears a voice
Rebuild my church
carting all those stones.

The sun ascends over her shoulder
while she pretends to disappear.
I take my first gulp of wildflower air.
I am shaking like Jesus in the garden,
quivering to be passed over.  

ELISABETH MURAWSKI

Black Madonna

She is the black madonna

Holding out

Among the ruins

Her face reflected in

The mirrored fragments.

Moments ago

A lifetime

Like clockwork

Tidework

The moon pulling

At the waters of her

Ruptured womb,

She lived in a graceful

Universe.

Now fragments of cut coloured

Glass once depicting saints,

Heroic deeds, martyrs

Bearing splintered wood

Upon their shoulders,

Are scattered at her feet.

Her tiny feet are tied to stakes,

Wood is gathered,

Pieces of household furniture

Lugged out into the square,

The parking lot,

The flat expanse of asphalt

Of a mini-mall.

She is tied with others.

The stench of siphoned gasoline

From abandoned auto wrecks or

Dug up dirt

Soaked with oil

From reclamation centres.

She's set ablaze

And all of them are

Lit up like candles.

Madonna stands still

Now in thin filaments of

Skin for robes,

A black butterfly

Holding the picture of the past

In the open air

Of a lost shrine.

There is something daunting

In the stillness

When everything is gone

When life mutters only

In quiet corners

Afraid.

Perhaps the muttering could be the wind

That rips incessantly

Scattering sane thought

Like hollow cake cans and

Candy wrappers scuttling

Across pavement.

Madonna is the mother of the moment

A lost womb

With lost litters

Of crawling creatures

That in darkness

Lie in terror

Voiceless as she is.

The tools and skills

Are gone

That carved the altar

Around her,

The lost light slanting

Across the grain of oak

And mahogany.

She is the black madonna

Holding out

Among the ruins.

Copyright July 2000 David Fraser

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From Matthew Fox's essay on The Black Madonna, #3

3. The Black Madonna calls us down to honor our lower charkas. One of the most dangerous aspects of western culture is its constant flight upwards, its race to the upper charkas (Descartes: “truth is clear and distinct ideas”) and its flight from the lower charkas. The Black Madonna takes us down, down to the first charkas including our relationship to the whole (first chakra, as I have explained elsewhere is about picking up the vibrations for sounds from the whole cosmos), our sexuality (second chakra) and our anger and moral outrage (third chakra). European culture in the modern era especially has tried to flee from all these elements both in religion and in education. The Black Madonna will not tolerate such flights from the earth, flights from the depths. [9]