Prayer-Beads to Saint Kyneburgha

1.

It is within your sacred atrium
I would contemplate, know
at-one-ment with sculptured,
feminine forma: an Annunciation
carved for the artist’s wife, Clare,
who is figure-double of the Virgin
Annunciate; & this Lamentation
Lady suckling her Christ-child;
both marvellous. And if the stone
be immaculate, then here we
have proof, we who are witness-
proof, yet willing victims
of our own surveillance.

Here in your Lady’s protectorate,
dark micro-citadel which cannot
be penetrated: vitreous, inviolable.
Embryonic, here I find shelter
from electrical storm, acid rain,
the acidic rhetoric of politician
& of media-celebrity. Tabernacled
in your vivacious stone, tranquil
after chemical imbalance, so I
will cling fast to your exemplary
prow-bust; know myself cloistered,
embalmed in Empyrean-film,
staring up at your Fixed Stars, the

ignition of your filamented Love.

2.
Penda’s daughter, Marian abbess;
pagan shoot, Christological bud.

You came, grave Kyneburgha, with
your sister to Medeshamstede, began

this magnificent work. Your oeuvre
still hatching redemptive life within,

&; without, this hushed sanctum.
Polytheism dovetailing into mono-

theism seamlessly. Penda’s daughter,
covenantal woman, let your trans-

lucency pierce the opaque, plastic
transistor of my Babel-incarceration.

Your Logos heightens, then focuses
the Dionysian life upon the keen

blade of sheer ontology. Pagan shoot,
Christological bud; your soil stirs:

sensuous, Pentecostal, at cold dawn.