My Little Poem: Mary
"Mother of God" by William Butler Yeats
Hello, Poetry Friend
Two days ago, January 1, was New Year’s. More important to me, it was the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. So to Yeats we go.
William Butler Yeats is not my favorite poet (not by an epic poem), but when he’s good, he’s very, very good. One of the first poems I learned by heart was his “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” This one is more complicated than that one. It took me good long while to memorize.
The Mother of God The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I not found content among the shows Every common woman knows, Chimney corner, garden walk, Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes And gather all the talk? What is this flesh I purchased with my pains, This fallen star my milk sustains, This love that makes my heart’s blood stop Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones And bids my hair stand up? – William Butler Yeats
“The Mother of God” takes us inside the Annunciation, then on past Christmas, into life with the infant Jesus. I love the emphasis on Mary’s body in the third stanza: her flesh, her pains, her breast milk, her heart, her blood, her bones, her hair.
Like Caryll Houselander’s book The Reed of God, this poem puts us right next to Mary, as if she were our best friend or our own mother, telling us not only the facts of what happened, but also how it sounded, how it actually felt. The poem makes me want to pull back the blue veil on every Nativity creche and see if Mary’s hair is standing up.
Yeats’ capitalization intrigues me. The first word of each line is capitalized, which was common back in Yeats’ day, but there are only two other capitalized words: Heavens, for the place, and Sudden.
Why Sudden?
Yeats doesn’t capitalize “flesh” or “love,” which he could have when writing about the Son of God. I looked to see if he capitalized “baby” or “child” and discovered neither word appears in the poem. Instead, he gives us Sudden. I don’t know why he does. But when I read that line — “Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones” — I feel instantly frozen.
At World Youth Day on August 5, 2023, when Pope Francis gathered before the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at Fatima, in Portugal, he announced a new Marian title: Our Lady in a Hurry, from Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth in Luke 2.
‘Our Lady in a Hurry.’ Do you like that? Our Lady in a Hurry. She hurries to be close to us. She hurries because she is a mother. Every time there is a problem, every time we invoke her, she doesn’t delay, she hurries.”
– Pope Francis
She hurries around the chimney corner. Along the garden walk. Up the rocky cistern, Wherever we mothers are.
Here’s my poem, inspired by Yeats.
Magnificat
A woman in skinny jeans, ballet flats,
a white coat, a black veil,
sits on the front row –
a rare Mass without her family.
For one hour she sits in herself
not a doctor, not a wife or a mother,
not anything but a woman
who came on a Friday at noon, a woman
hungry as Eve
mercy-full as Mary.
Her eyelashes ponder.
She cannot imagine a future with
no piano, no apple slices,
only an older friend somehow overwhelming her tall frame
with a frantic grey hug
a friendship the older one does not deserve
(and they both know it) but they also both
know this inner leaping,
these boys who will not stay still.
– Megan WillomeP.S. Here’s my link to Yeats’ poem at Soundcloud, if you’d like to hear me recite it.
Happy poeming!
Megan
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