Poem | Francis Annagu

Minstrel Nun

The Weeping Saint by Ernest Williamson

O! Minstrel nun,
Show how you made
Your love,
Vegetate, swell and sprout to sky,

How you made
The sun,
Luster across your forlorn orb,

How the river folds and flows
Thru your endless road. Though
The quarter-moon, cold and young,
You are done from this lovers day and
song,

You made
The hills
Sloping into the lonely eelgrass and
lemonweeds,
Whist they are, sugared and full
From tales of the African bees.

Are you the minstrel nun
Pronounced to marriage of a helmsman?
Look! His ship sails south, throughout
The beauteous Yedseram, half mast in
Surging spirit of the torrents.

War has ended,
Marked on the bridge of returning,
All that's in a man is the brightness of
love,
Gibed in the navel of his soul,
Upon winter of the sea, blue sea.

Keep a rose on a bench
Shall you remember
This sweet parting kiss,
Tasteful and tender, cultured in
sundowns,
On the beach hurray of Garifuna drums!
Muting into your rolling monastry mat, at
 twelve.

How your love,
Your sun,
Your rivers,
Your hills,
Bind into the circle of a man,
Warming his ice-cold palms
'Tween the innocence of your breasts.
Oh! You are the minstrel nun
Sent to Benedictine in 1504.