The Insomnia of Hildegard of Bingen

Return to me, cleft

of living light, scissure

in darkness, fierce,

scotomic rain of haloed sparks

and extinguished stars,

whose pain is my familiar,

my purpose, my assurance of salvation.

Gone from me is she

who, in my ordeal, put the damp pearls

of her fingertips to my temples,

and saw in these ecstatic

visions less an obliteration

of my self, and more a kind

of kunst, a matter of my art,

and of preparedness for the pure,

searing reality of suffering

and of love that is divine.

My eyes open now onto hell's

dull and unrelenting shadow—

but also I see her as in the dawn,

glowing and adorned with virtues,

and as she appeared, once, in my chamber,

when she could not speak, and I calmed

with the lace of spanned hands

her throat's small and flustered vessel

until she was not silent.

Am I not God's mouthpiece?

Or am I nothing more than tithed daughter,

last rites read at my beginning?

Melisma of bodiless light,

I beg you: besiege my flesh,

free my heart—lift my sorrow

and my remembrance—

make room of me once more.