Poetry Corner: "For My Old Self, at Notre Dame" by Marie Ponsot

For My Old Self, At Notre Dame:

Fluctuat nec mergitur

By Marie Ponsot

The dark madonna cut from a knot of wood

has robes whose folds make waves against the grain

and a touching face – noble in side view,

impish or childish seen head-on from above.

The wood has the rich stain of tannin, raised

to all-color lustre by the steep of time.

The mouths of her shadows are pursed by time

to suck sun-lit memories from the wood.

Freezing damp and candle-smut have raised

her eyebrows into wings flung up by the grain,

caught in the light of bulbs plugged high above.

She stands alert, as if hailed, with beasts in view.

Outside on the jeweled river-ship, I view

a girl’s back, walking off. Oh. Just in time

I shut up. She’d never hear me shout above

the tour-guides and ski-skate kids. How I would

have liked to see her face again, the grain

of beauty on her forehead, her chin raised

startled; her Who are you? wild, a question raised

by seeing me, an old woman, in plain view.

Time is a tree in me; in her it’s a grain

ready to plant. I go back in, taking my time

leafy among stone trunsk that soar in stone woods

where incense drifts, misty, lit pink from above.

She’s headed for her hotel room then above

Cluny’s garden. She’ll sit there then, feet raised

notebook on her knees, to write. Maybe she would

have heard, turned, known us both in a larger view

and caught my age in the freshness of its time.

She dreads clocks, she says. Such dry rot warps the grain.

They still say mass here. Wine and wheat-grain

digest to flesh in words that float above

six kneeling women, a man dressed outside time,

and the dark madonna, her baby raised

dangerously high to pull in our view.

Magic dame, cut knot, your ancient wood

would reach back to teach her if it could. Spring rain.

Through it I call to thank her, loud above

the joy she raised me for, this softfall. Sweet time.