poetry, Hildegard of Bingen

Loving tenderness abounds for all
from the darkest
to the most eminent one beyond the stars,

Exquisitely loving all
she bequeaths the kiss of peace
upon the ultimate King.

Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,

O angels, insatiably
into God’s gaze.

Perversity

could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.

But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings – he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam –
that a mud – bound spirit might soar.

O glistening starlight,
O most brilliant singular figure
of the royal marriage,
O glowing gem:
You are arrayed as a person of high rank
who has no mark nor wrinkle;

You are also an angel’s companion
and a citizen of sacredness.

Run, flee from the ancient destroyer’s cave!
Come, enter into the palace of the King.

I behold you,
noble, glorious and whole woman,
the pupil of purity.
You are the sacred matrix
in which God takes great pleasure.

The essences of Heaven flooded into you,
and the Great Word of God dressed itself in flesh.

You appeared as a shining white lily,
as God looked upon you before all of Creation.

O lovely and tender one,
how greatly has God delighted in you.
For He has placed His passionate embrace within you,
so that His Son might nurse at your breast.

Your womb held joy,
with all the celestial symphony sounding through you,
Virgin, who bore the Son of God,
when your purity became luminous in God.

Your flesh held joy,
like grass upon which dew falls,
pouring its life-green into it,
and so it is true in you also,
o Mother of all delight.

Now let all Ecclesia shine in joy
and sound in symphony
praising the most tender woman,
Mary, the bequeather/seed-source of God.
Amen

Behold, Mary,
you who increase life,
who rebuilds the path,
You who confused death
and wore down the serpent,
To you Eve raised herself up,
her neck rigid with inflated arrogance.

You strode upon this arrogance
while bearing God’s Son of Heaven,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

O gentle and loving Mother,
I behold you.
For Heaven released into the world
that which you brought forth.

This one,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And to this one,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

No creature has meaning

without the Word of God.

God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.

The Word is living, being,

spirit, all verdant

all creativity.

This Word flashes out in

every creature.

This is how the spirit is in

the flesh – the Word is indivisible from God.

You, all-accomplishing

Word of the Father
are the light of primordial
daybreak over the spheres.

You, the foreknowing
mind of divinity,
foresaw all your works
as you willed them,
your prescience hidden
in the heart of your power,
your power like a wheel around the world,
whose circling never began
and never slides to an end.

O greening branch!
You stand in your nobility

Like the rising dawn.
Rejoice now and exult

And deign to free the fools we are.
From our long slavery to evil

And hold out your hand
To raise us up.