Writing a mysterious text on the precious parchment of the soul, in words no human mouth can utter.—Marguerite Porete, A Mirror for Simple Souls
they wrenched your words from your body
then ripped your sex from your words
which circulated motherless for six hundred years
attributed to men in flagrant opposition
to your florid feminine metaphors
finally united with your name
only in the age of science
an age that vaunted your renown long after
the triumph of a Reason you wished to slay
and the occlusion of the community for which you stood firm
opposing the church
their death sentence boasted of their sumptuous violent power
a cracked mirror to your purity and faith
| in the shadows here below | a life brought to nothingness |
| she cannot be robbed | she cannot be given anything |
| they cannot tell good from evil | sin has no weight or measure |
| cross the valley of humility | and the plain of truth |
| look into the depths from the depths | and up to the heights from the heights |
| so she goes naked into an unknown land | surely the virtues must serve such souls |
| we should be moderate in all things | except in love |
| the wound of love is the death of reason | only the innocent can escape the weight of this burden |
were we to place ourselves with the unconsoled
to grasp the hand of the begger instead of the designer purse
to follow the wisdom that appends no string of letters after our name
to vanish from all hierarchies
suppress the clever rejoinder to party-time repartee
pass up the plaque in the chapel
were we not to try to dull our pain
were we to seek the mountains that elevate the soul
rather than the ritual high places
humbly to serve a single cause
and stand with the hosts
Around 1300, the mystical Christian devotee Marguerite Porete wrote an inspirational treatise named A Mirror for Simple Souls that quickly became popular across Western Europe. Her recommendations, while well-researched and couched in particularly lovely prose, were standard for mystics of the time: giving oneself over entirely to God, renouncing material and worldly concerns, trusting only in an entirely personal inspiration for guidance.
Although many had been writing similar texts for more than a century (including Hildegard von Bingen and Meister Eckhart), a local bishop decided to persecute Marguerite, perhaps because she was vulnerable as a woman without a male patron and perhaps because the local beguine sect of which she was associated was currently drawing a lot of support. Marguerite was declared a heretic and executed.
A Mirror for Simple Souls was still widely translated and read, but as an anonymous text. Only in 1946 was the text matched with quotes from Marguerite’s trial and reassociated with her.
The middle “mirror” section of this poem is composed of quotations from the book (published by Crossroad Spiritual Classics, translated by Charles Crawford).
This poem was published in issue #4 of Ranger magazine in 2024.
Andy Oram
December 23, 2023