Maria Gravida

Then the gold mother began her touching me

With her long brown face & hands 

She tickled me & told me I was beautiful

She held me in the ikon & we gazed

We had a pretty goldfinch         death      salvation

Love was strong as death        Peacocks walked by 

Blue immortality        Finches played in black branches

Souls around the cross        It was death in life

Our gold earth gravida 

Not a casket but a darkroom for our love 

The herma wrought of silver, gilded in fire 

Gold mother around me inside me gravida

- Jean Valentine (2007)

Leaving

The dark black line
around the darker brown
ball of your eye

- I could only look at one eye at a time
like a horse:
white ring around the eye:

terror.
Eight years I sat on my heels in the field

waiting for you.
I wanted to.

- Jean Valentine

I came to you

I came to you
Lord, because of
the fucking reticence
of this world
no, not the world, not reticence, oh
Lord Come
Lord Come
We were sad on the ground
Lord Come
We were sad on the ground.

Jean Valentine, "I came to you" (2004)

My old body

My old body:
ladder of sunlight,
mercury dust floating through -

My forgivenesses,
how you have learned to love me in my sleep.


Jean Valentine, "My old body" (2004)

The Messenger

My eyes were clenched, they are opening …
everything, nothing …
We aren’t afraid.
The earth drips through us

Now I want to live forever
Now I could scatter my body easily
if it was any use

now that the earth has rained through us
green white
green green grass.


You say you came to say if I live without you
I’ll live. That’s always been your story.


Jean Valentine, from “The Messenger” (1979)

The Drinker (2)

In the doorway
you face a candle
Your face a white island
between the two currents, between the
falls of your black hair

You who drank your life greedily
hole never filled

Girl-woman who could not
whose lips could not open

Hungry ghost in the doorway

Your bones might as well have flown together and spoken:
Where is she whom my heart loves?

—Oh my darling,
where do you look for me?

Jean Valentine, “The Drinker (2)” (1997)

To the Black Madonna of Chartres

Friend or no friend,
darkness or light,
vowels or consonants,
water or dry land,
anything more from you now
is just gravy
—just send me down forgiveness, send me down
bearing myself a black cupful of light.

Jean Valentine, “To the Black Madonna of Chartres” (1997)