Happy National Poetry Day! The theme this year is Vision, so here's a poem about one of my favourite characters (on whom I wrote my undergrad thesis), Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was a twelfth-century cloistered nun and Abbess, who, from a young age, experienced a series of strange visions. An artist, healer, composer and prolific writer she left a rich legacy or work behind her, including an early medical treatise (Causes and Cures), three books of her other-worldly and End Times visions, poems, and scores of music that broke all the normal conventions of her time. The picture is from one of her paintings. The phrase 'Feather on the breath of God' is Hildegard's own.

Hildegard

Listen –

My mind’s a jangle

Of words this morning,

My head a flash of light,

I have seen...strange things:

Dragon with many heads

And stars that whirl

And swirl to myriad music,

Things that make little sense

To you men of reason.

We nuns have been taught

To whisper through cloisters,

Silent, submissive;

That is not my way,

For the voice within me

Commands me to shout –

And shout I shall,

Against injustice,

Against your male

Dominion,

That still, small

Voice within me,

Rising, clarion call.

And I have seen...such things:

The greening earth

In vortex of ash and flame,

Spinning soul sucked dry,

A cloud formed like

The head of a mushroom,

Tell me...What does it all mean?

You call me small,

And despise my femininity,

Wishing me to fit the moulds

Your ancestors made for me.

A little woman, yes,

And yet one through whom

The voice of God is

Powerfully heard –

Rallying call

For the strange,

And the feared,

And the odd:

Feather on the

Breath of God.