for :: THEOTOKOS ::

Our Lady of Ardboe

By Paul Muldoon

I

Just there, in a corner of the whin-field,
Just where the thistles bloom.
She stood there as in Bethlehem
One night in nineteen fifty-three or four.
The girl leaning over the half-door
Saw the cattle kneel, and herself knelt.

II

I suppose that a farmer’s youngest daughter
Might, as well as the next, unravel
The winding road to Christ’s navel.
Who’s to know what’s knowable?
Milk from the Virgin Mother’s breast,
A feather off the Holy Ghost?
The fair thorn? The holy well?
Our simple wish for there being more to life
Than a job, a car, a house, a wife —
The fixity of running water.
For I like to think, as I step these acres,
That a holy well is no more shallow
Nor plummetless than the pools of Shiloh,
the fairy thorn no less true than the Cross.

III

Mother of our Creator, Mother of our Savior,
Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable.
Virgin most prudent, Virgin most venerable,
Mother inviolate, Mother undefiled.
And I walk waist-deep among purples and golds
With one arm as long as the other.








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