Viriditas

More musing on Hildegard von Bingen

Barev! I wrote this yesterday in about thirty minutes, using excerpts from Hildegard on the Tanning Bed, and then spent HOURS editing it. I tried very hard to make it a stern adherence to the Petrarchan sonnet form, buuuuut my metre got away from me. It is mainly iambic tetrameter that, after an anapaestic caesura in line four, becomes iambic pentameter. ‘Splendour’ of course, is a trochee. I seem to be plagued by trochees. Please leave me a comment, or email me at eloisepeniston@outlook.com, if you can advise me in matters of metre. Without further delay, here is-

Viriditas

I am the breath of living-light’s splendour.

I see the world with but my Soul alone,

In relish of that greening flesh-force grown

Perceive the Word: alive . . . awake . . . tender

And see raw-green in flesh-good surrender.

Like that open vault of Heaven’s fire-own

Lets its impenetrable fire be known

And suffuse my mind-world green, to render

All that is wholly living, wholly Life,

That plentitude of ringing-chords, a sight,

That leavens keen as Pizan’s little knife

Like a mind’s palm licked with searing-delight

And so, the soft-sweet-soulsap comes a-life,

The Word carved, now fresh and new, all for Light.