Posted on by Marly Youmans

Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work

MARLY YOUMANS is the author of sixteen books of poetry and fiction. Recent work includes a long poem, Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood), a novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius), and a poetry collection, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia).

’Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work’ was the President’s Choice Award
and Runner-up, Formal Verse Contest 2024, The English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch, Australia)

Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work

A flock of images allures the monk,
Seizing hold of thought, and he remembers
Unburning limbs and leaves that waved in fire,
How branches seemed to sprout and stir in flame
As if in water, how light grew to voice
And spoke to Moses, boy fished from the Nile,
Flame becoming illuminated word,
Sight and hearing jumbled as one in play.
He hesitates and feels a burning catch
At him, his fingers with the brush and paint
Floating above the vellum quires and text…
The parchment maker and the scribe have done
Their tasks and left a space for ornament
And figures framed by snow or greenery.

And so, he thinks, a naked page is like
The Uncreated who sustains the world,
The spheres, the moon, the sky pricked out in stars.
All-things are in his care who is not-thing,
Who is the blossoming causer-to-be,
Who clasps all mortal instants that to us
Are past and present like an arrow flung
Flashing from dark to light and back again,
As if a sparrow fled the ravened night
—so black when winter’s wolves gulp sun and moon!—
Through slots in stone, into the mead-hall cheer
Of feasting, bardic song, and Christmas tales,
Only to make a calligraphic dash
Across the light and toward another gap
And then be lost in inks of mystery.
What will the art in me begin this day?
The cosmos gleams with possibility:
All space, all time, the round of season-flux,
Apocalypse of birth that cracks the dark,
Hoe-scratchings at the ground once past Twelfth Night
With milk and honey, oil and yeast slow-dripped
On turf, with mass and thrice-blessed rowan cross,
And through the cycle of the turning year.
So strange it is, this sparrow-line of us,
The tick by tick of human lives ensnared
By year-long wheels of saints and feasts and fasts.
We are the sparrow with its dark-light-dark
Of arrow flight that’s fletched with pain and joy,
And we are dancers weaving in a ring
Of births and deaths and resurrection days,
Fragrant with the scents of hay and flower.

His hand trembles, the sable hair of the brush
Is blued with azurite, and now he sees
The unconsuming flames of burning bush
And hears sigla and words in hawthorn ink
Begin to scatter notes and sing for him,
Below the blanks that soon will come to be
The rich illuminations of the year,
The glass-locked stream, the flag-decked castle spire,
A prince with hound and hunting tapestry
And board with gold salt cellar and venison,
Some peasants warming their backsides by a fire,
Tunics and gowns a hoisted comedy.
He ponders the hoop of seasons and how it is
The sparrow flies in straightness like a pin…
His hand dips and he makes first marks in blue
As he dreams that linear or rounded time’s
A pin of gold and a jeweled, hammered hoop:
The ring-brooch on a cloak of endlessness,
Abundance of the uncreated light.

Posted on by Marly Youmans

Three poems by Marly Youmans

The most recent books by MARLY YOUMANS are the book-length poem Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023), a novel set in Puritan New England, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius Press, 2020) and her most recent collection of poems, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia Press, 2019.) She divides her time between Cooperstown, New York, and Cullowhee, North Carolina

November Mandevillas                                                       

So long to fathom that the hectic world

And common lives are not what they appear

But rarer, else—that nothing’s as it seems,

That there are imps and wyverns in our midst

And angels perching in our backyard trees…

The mandevillas wheeled inside to live

Inside a kitchen still are flowering,

Last blossoms deeper, darker at the edge,

Flesh more ethereal, more ruby-clear,

Each one sending forth its secret name

In joy despite the ebbing of the light

And all green dormancy that’s soon to come,

The word of being drowsy in the leaves

And growing stranger, swooning into dream.

Blue and Shadow

Evening sorts its blues and chooses cobalt—

Only hours ago it was noon, shadows

Brief underfoot—my shadow lengthened, slipped

Silently behind me, gathering dark

Like the train of a dress made out of years.

And is the shining Lucifer at fault

That shadows grow, that every light-drenched rose

—its gold-bed mined by bees, its petals stripped—

Must go, that even an ascending lark

Will fall? Such gorgeous blue! No need for tears.

The Cartagena Fair

1. The Night Fair and the Crone

                        And no matter what…

                        there’s no night fair more wild

                        than here in Cartagena.

                               —Federico García Lorca, tr. Rothenberg

The good Lord sent these children, difficult

But radiant… In truth, they weren’t at fault

For their unsettled humors, nor their lack

Of industry. Made feckless by the age,

The shedding of our myths and rituals—

When I rocked them in the ash-wood cradle,

Who knew that they would be so tough to sell

At Cartagena’s wildfire fair, the famed

Night-fair of love and ache and secrecy?

For they were chatelaines of beauty’s keys,

And I instructed each in courtly ways,

Enough to charm a queen or nobleman.

I’ll pack them off again tomorrow night,

To shine and lure at our unbridled fair,

Though I expect to tote them home once more….

Their father not one whit the better man,

Always with the betraying, stroking flanks

Of any shape or shade, so long as the mark

Pleased the arrow of his momentary

Desire: and yet he still desired my flesh,

Longed to kneel in adoration’s bonfire,

And I eventually forgave his wrongs.

Perhaps I’ll sell him too, if Venus comes

To sneak around the night fair, slipping here

And there like some old moon-haunched carny tart!

Or maybe we’ll plunk down and have a cup

Of something wild and starred, to laugh at men

Who once were each Adonis with his wand,

And children useless as abandoned gods

Lolling about in alabaster heaps.

2.  The Maidens to the Crone

How can we heed your words when night-fairs call,

And the green minnow-vein at a wrist flickers

As Lorca’s lightwheel spins against the dark—

Then all we crave is for Adonis now

To sear us here and there and here again,

To tilt in a car at the very top

Of the ferris wheel: the rings of the carousel

Go flailing, flaming, flung as high as the moon,

And we forget the all you ever said.

Golden fish ignite

And spangle sky: wildfire’s ours,

Ours the fireworked fair.

3. The Young Man to the Crone

How could I ever leave my mother’s house—

She who tied my mind to sunset’s reins

And made my brothers leap in gingko leaves

Or tumbling cherry blossoms in the spring,

She who let the crystal of my mind

Be filled by far-off scents and golden birds

And deepest cobalt reaches of the seas

Where stir the winding lamplit mysteries.

My mind is an Adonis. I cannot go.

4. Her Adonis to the Crone

All my wanderings were hunts for you

Who hid from me so often, your image

Twinkling, fleeing behind a scrim of trees—

Who knows where you would fly away from me,

Maybe hunkering in some scriptorium,

Laughing and crying with the bawdy monks,

Or kneeling in a candled radiance

By whittled relic-bones of saints long dead.

I pictured you uprising from a pool

Ringed-round with massy stones, one crooked tree

Lifting its parasol above your head,

And you, your face gone naked, water-sluiced,

In that instant an eft-faced innocent.

How I hardened against you!

5. Crone Gazing in the Mirror

I throw away my veils and golden charms

And look with interest at my face, my self,

Grown old: the tiny flick of wisdom’s light

I might have dreamed, the worn, repentant heart,

The limbs that will lie naked in the arms

Of my Adonis, hunter of my flesh.

Shoo the children out of doors like chickens

And send them to the Cartagena fair

To win a love, to find some craft or work

That satisfies our ancient urge to make,

To spy some secret altarpiece and kneel….

A scent of lavender catches the breeze,

Cicadas ratchet up the evening’s song,

And Lorca’s garlic clove of moon will rise

Again in its gold glory, tossed to skies

Of Cartagena, and shine upon the fair.

Posted on by Marly Youmans

Five poems by Marly Youmans

The most recent books by MARLY YOUMANS are the book-length poem Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023); a novel set in Puritan New England, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius Press, 2020); and her most recent collection of poems, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia Press, 2019.) She divides her time between Cooperstown, New York and Cullowhee, North Carolina.

The White Ibis 

Shell islands bleached to white, left by natives

In salty tidal rivers, and the ibis 

Dazzling against the sky…and there I saw

The wedding-froth of mating plume and leaned 

And caught a feather in my hand, the whole 

Bounty of landscape trembling with the heat 

And with the strange and flaring energies 

Of something not yet known, one tremendous

Something manifesting presence… that’s how 

It was for me, so strange it was to stare 

From the prow of the sailboat and to let 

A sunlit feather slip into my hand. 

At dead of night the ibis came to me, 

As beautiful as Eros to the soul, 

And bent to press its breathing dream-shape close 

Until I shivered, feeling spirit pour

Out of the river with its oyster isles,

Out of starred sky, out of the heart of the bird, 

Proclaiming more and more and ever more, 

Hidden behind the arras of the world. 

The Summoning

Long ago, I rode a horse

   As pretty as a ballad and strong,

And I called his name Lord Randal,

        With a neck like a tower, withers

As glossy as the Chinese silk,

             And all of him a song.

One day we found a curling path

   That led into the forest’s edge,

And on that path there lay a thing,

        Magic of a flaming feather.

The horse Lord Randal said to me,

             Here’s trouble, ruin’s pledge.

And did I bend to grasp the gold

   That bore the mark of fairyland,

And was I careless of the wrong?

        Come danger and come woe together!

I cried, and marveled at the fire

In rachis, calamus, and vane

           That quivered in my hand. 

To the Flowers

Flowers, you give yourself effortlessly, 

Without a stint, now strewing fragrances

But soon your petals in a dream of rain. 

I think you are a lesson meant for me, 

You giving soul and beauty all away 

And never counting out a single cost. 

I lean into the breeze, feeling myself 

Like grasses, rippling with the summer’s sun, 

Seeking like you to give myself away, 

Artlessly with art, a paradox 

That will lose luster, die, and be a seed.

Three hundred yards away from Lake Otsego,

The river makes small thunders at the dam,

Not yet the potent Susquehanna, no,

And the great blue heron like a long-legged god

Who rules the leaves and lapidary rocks

Skewers a fish and stalks out of the stream

Picking his everlasting way on stones…

I would not be the bluegill with his small

And flapping motions, helpless to change a fate,

Nor the heron, kingly in his element:

I side with flowers, incense, radiance,

The streaming of a blossom into air.

The Angel in the Tree

Who can understand the sins of angels?

Angular figure bent to thieve

A single egg, the bangle

Of halo dangling from a branch as leaves

Wholly surrendered to the wind

Go still: some presence grieves

The bird, the nest, the plucking from the tree,

The way the angel’s featherings

Seem leaves, the tragedy

In falls of feathered and unfeathered things…

A pebble that disturbs a pool

Begets a world of rings.

“Pray You, Love, Remember”

   This painting is the first using my daughter Cecelia’s motifs, 

    in my own style; her peonies, her sky, a glass structure 

    representing her soul house. —Laura Murphy Frankstone

A simple, delicate glass house to float

In skies like lakes, with peonies that float 

Like clouds and pitch their shadows on the sky

Like lilies on a pond, though clearly sky

Lades the canvas field with its forever,

Mystical, transparent blue forever…

The soul-house, left adrift in peonies,

Sets free one note of song, and peonies

Begin to stream perfume and streaks of song

Until the sky and blooms and glass and song

Are blent as one, and soul as fair as glass

Is painted, snared in flower-cloud and glass…

   O soul-house sing the songs of kingdom come,

   Of was and is and timelessness to come.