Saint's Day
All of the aunts used to take my hands between theirs
and say, nodding, I know there's hope for you, at least - whose rosaries
sparkled around my neck, and snaked my wrist, and glittered
in pale coils deep inside my jewelry box. I dipped
my fingers in the wells of holy water, watched
the wounds drip with a real fascination - and when,
one summer we had Mass in someone's yard
and I approached the rim of the cup
and saw the moon lost in that still, dark water,
I took breath as solemnly as communion,
and the grove moved carefully around us,
the prim hedges grown as long and undulant as oak trees,
every berry the deep-dyed juniper berry.
I found the date out in some tourist's book
printed on cheap paper in one of those Dublin shops
that teaches you your heritage. A virgin, martyred,
late sixth century. I saw her long plait, her white
shoulder, and the hot hand of some pagan king, and her flight
through the snow, ragged and barefoot, the cliffs
high and sharp and full of wind, the pale blossoms
shivering, as delicate as wafers. The moon sank in the sky
and smashed itself to pieces on the waves, the mass
of voices, close and hollow, chiming her resistance -
at the cliffs at last, that damp place, the wind
wild at my hair and in my dress, I took her
for my own, laid her by the side
of the ecstatic pictures, the coiled beads,
the confusion of berries and sacraments.
I observe her as carelessly as I observe Easter -
the glamour of rebirth, the helpless allure
of beatific death. The aunts approve,
send shamrock cuttings trapped in glass. The druids
shake their woolly heads, but maybe she
enjoys it, having gone, for all her fervor,
to her death for the sake of a beautiful story,
the wild, gilded loops of a Chi-Ro page -
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