THE VIRGIN OF ALBERT
Oh, the poor Virgin!
She is throwing herself from Heaven;
She is plunging down from the high tower with the child in her hands.
Look, hold your breath, watch the awful gesture of her divine despair!
Her golden figure shoots head downwards through the air;
The red carcase of the Church gapes beneath her;
The ragged skeleton of the tower holds her up
High above the ruined town.
But she is plunging.
With her arms outstretched beyond her head, downward,
With the child in her terrible pointing hands,
She is diving down;
She will dash the child down, on to the stones of the desolate abandoned street.
She has been betrayed.
God has betrayed her.
Oh, the pity!
Oh, the terrible, desperate creature!
She believed in God,
And her people worshipped her,
And because she was the Mother of Compassion,
She stood between them and the anger of God.
For she believed in the love of God.
Lifted up above the city,
Above the little dark homes of her helpless people,
She stood, holding up her child to God.
So for centuries she stood lifted up in her humility and love;
And because God had chosen her and given her a child,
Because she had borne a son to Him,
She believed he would be kind to her people.
One day destruction came like roaring dragons out of Heaven, and fell upon the town.
Out of the soft mysterious distance invisible monsters came shrieking past her head.
Flocks of them, unseen, with whistling wings, thick as vultures to a carcase in a desert,
They swooped down and sprang upon the city.
And the city writhed in their clutches.
Houses staggered, the streets cracked open.
Meek, motionless, holding her child up to Heaven, the Virgin watched from her tower.
She watched the houses vomit,
Watched them reel like drunkards—fall;
Watched the people running, pouring through the quaking streets with their treasures piled on wagons;
Watched the wagons smothered, buried, with the horses, the beds and bedding, the fowls and pretty birds in cages.
She could hear the women and the children screaming;
And the squealing of horses and groaning of cattle and squeaking of pigs caught in burning stables, sheds, yards.
Helpless, high above them, prisoner in the thundering sky,
Bound to her shaking pedestal, with the church walls giving way beneath her,
She stood holding her child up to God, while her people screamed to her to save them.
Now the city is deserted.
The people are gone.
The roofless houses and the broken buildings grimace at the Virgin.
The houses of the people who once worshipped her are open filthy places.
The church yawns horrid.
Where the altar was is a heap of dust.
The uncovered apse is choked with debris, and the wind and the rain play new havoc there every day.
Oh, the poor desolate Virgin!
She has been abandoned;
She has been betrayed.
God has betrayed her.
She is throwing herself down from Heaven with the child in her terrible pointing hands.
She is diving down;
But she is held.
In the very act of determined despair she is held.
Something holds her suspended in anguish.
Shooting head downwards, she hangs there.
The supreme moment of her unbearable agony is fixed there, forever, against the sky.
Oh, the poor Virgin!