Virginia Berry, American poet.
FIRELIGHT PIECE
Virginia Berry
Now height turns into length
Upon the firelit floor,
And where is the pride of strength
that stretched the scrimmage score?
The speed that sprinted at track
Is slackening the wire,
And only the eyes give back
The leap and flash of fire.
Where, as the fingers tense
To turn the innocent page,
Is the schoolroom impudence
That scrawled a beard on a sage?
Now heroes shake the land
Beneath a seven-league tread,
And fathers understand
What long ago they read.
And the rocket motor runs
Where fireshine shakes the wall
And women stare at sons
Grown long instead of tall.
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THE GARDEN ENCLOSED
Virginia Berry
The garden’s tall white tower closed with keys
She learned to turn. She gathered atones for a wall
Circling the gates. Where something like color moved
Outside, the locks demanded subtleties
Homeless since Eden. (All
The moats and all the hedges stood reproved.)
These were the hints that in the secret garden
A secret fire might burn, a loosening
Come soon – these were the clues
That here enclosure would not always harden
Around astringencies.
Meanwhile the garden did not speak its news
Before it opened in this fluent spring.
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THIS VIRGIN
Virginia Berry
… c’est bien por Dieu que la pensé chrétienne garde
jalousement cette vierge, dont la présence veille sur lin_
telligibilité du monde, alors même qu’elle n’engendre pour
lihomme aucun de ces résultats pratiques… c’est méconnaître…
Le primat de la centemplation … –Etienne Gilson
Sterility is sometimes a term of love.
Where finalism hides herself away
Deep at the core of all that is and of
All that will be:look, look down, and say
“Here is a loving virgin.” Kneel and pray,
Knowing she prays with you beyond the grille,
Knowing her contemplation is wrapped around
The blinding and deafening mind of God, until
There is nothing about her that answers light or sound –
There is nothing at all about her. The only hound
That has ever tracked her down is the mind of man
Sensing her prayer when it beats in the tide or a star
And guards her right to explain as best she can
This Godward fruitlessness. ( All virgins are
Slow to explain themselves.) If you have far
To go to her, you will not find her waiting,
For she is God’s and he is enough for her;
You will only find the riddle past equating
With answers – until you learn what secrets of
A bride whose sterility is term of love.