Poem
Medbh McGuckian
Hand Reliquary, Ave Maria Lane
Hand Reliquary, Ave Maria Lane
Hand Reliquary, Ave Maria Lane
God knows that there is no proofthat part returns to wholeness
simply because miracles happen
at a single church-going.
Her verdant branches labelled
with the names of the five senses,
the garden not ours, she prayed
for her illness to last beyond the grave,
and be the unsealer of that tree.
She might have been dead for a week,
though she went on with her deep
dying, her womb a transparent crystal
turning into a brown relic
even before her death. The blinding
beauty of her hood opening
acted upon me as my own ghost
would do, sounding silk,
as with a lifting gesture
she tore off flesh from her hand,
driving wide her middle finger
into the palm of the other.
Till being a vessel, Christ appeared to her
as a dish filled with carved-up bread
so unnaturally sweet, so lightly crushed,
she could quench the tall language
of his image in her mouth,
which was the breast-wound, always on the point
of being taken, in his female side.
© 2004, Medbh McGuckian
From: The Book of the Angel
Publisher: The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, Co. Meath
From: The Book of the Angel
Publisher: The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, Co. Meath
Medbh McGuckian
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1950)
Medbh McGuckian was born in 1950 in Belfast where she currently lectures in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University. Her association with Queen’s has been long and fruitful; as a student she was a contemporary of Paul Muldoon and took classes with Seamus Heaney, receiving her BA in 1972 and MA in 1974. She taught English at secondary level for some years be...
Poems
Poems of Medbh McGuckian
Close
Hand Reliquary, Ave Maria Lane
God knows that there is no proofthat part returns to wholeness
simply because miracles happen
at a single church-going.
Her verdant branches labelled
with the names of the five senses,
the garden not ours, she prayed
for her illness to last beyond the grave,
and be the unsealer of that tree.
She might have been dead for a week,
though she went on with her deep
dying, her womb a transparent crystal
turning into a brown relic
even before her death. The blinding
beauty of her hood opening
acted upon me as my own ghost
would do, sounding silk,
as with a lifting gesture
she tore off flesh from her hand,
driving wide her middle finger
into the palm of the other.
Till being a vessel, Christ appeared to her
as a dish filled with carved-up bread
so unnaturally sweet, so lightly crushed,
she could quench the tall language
of his image in her mouth,
which was the breast-wound, always on the point
of being taken, in his female side.
From: The Book of the Angel
Hand Reliquary, Ave Maria Lane
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