MARY MAGDALENE

EPIC POEM


BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE



PART I


CANTO I


Now I will sing thanks for the fruit

Of love of the dear disciple

Mary Magdalene, who visits

In her strong castle the word-in-flesh,

That had sought for the hearer

Who was beautiful. Jesus said, I am

With thee in paradise!--- From the rock Gischala

Messiah appeared by the sea of Magdala.


But on the sea of my dreams

She walks on the most beautiful white shell

To the hem of Tyre, city of the purple trade.

The blue winds blow in her mind,

And in you, Magdalene, the almond ripens.

O daughter of Sion, more than pleasant

Jerusalem will be to you and to me!


We will be like dreamers.

But what does that mean? Is it not much better

In dreams and all in transfiguring light,

In the dearest dream alone about

The dearest one? But who holds the blissful wine

In what kind of cup? For not a dull wine

The wine will it be, but a drink of joy:

With God in love in the heavenly homeland!


Now I will go to the Sea of Galilee,

I flee thither like a wild gazelle,

Where Magdalene's princely seat stands

And against the hem of stones the wave washes,

Where the gardener sets roses and sows

Mustard seeds, at the beloved place

Magdala stands, the beautiful castle.

It is done! Then the demiurge rested.


Hefata! Open up! thou beautiful gate!

There stands the lion of white marble stone,

And narrow paths are in the May flowers

With golden blossoms in the morning light.

The winds flute on golden reeds,

When Magdalene began to sing. 

Near an angelic hosanna sounded around her.


The wall of red and white stones

Is there, in the sun's gleam the brass pinnacle.

Once the Love of God comes to the fall

And resurrection for many. New senses

Are everlasting around the sound of heaven

Formed. Magdalene in love

Was already so beautiful: a tower of ivory,

Side-bordered with red tendrils of vine.


She was clothed in white linen,

With long golden hairs flowing down.

Thus she walked dreamily by groves of olive trees:

Let Messiah's blood come upon my head,

Like oil, like ointment. My eyes weep,

Longing for the beautiful gate of heaven,

That once sounded, Let there be light, Jhehi Or!


Princess Magdalene walked in the courtyard,

Girded pure at the loins of her mind,

In her heart she was God's maid.

She held in her pure hands

The strings and sang many a verse

To David's melodies. Life will end,

Eternal life over the blood of the vein,

O strength of Eli, Magdalene hoped!


With her moist sweet eyes

The lovely one alone in the sanctuary.

She already had a presentiment of all that once happened,

She heard the whole gospel;

How about her was cried, There, there!

The resurrections: Talita kum!

Arise, girl! said the mouth of Messiah,

The ear of Mary heard it.


She prayed to heaven once: O Father

In the kingdom of heaven, forgive me all my trespasses!

She had once danced in the theatre

With passions in her soul,

Where in Asia Minor the Magna Mater

Was honoured as Astarte in stone.

But now she cried, O come, Maranata!

My Lord! you child of Bethlehem-Efrata!


The castle has a hall, chairs, tables,

In the morning a beautiful window view

Over to the green lake of fish.

And she felt the comfort and happiness

In the freshness of the Passover days

And longed for paradise again.

In the snow rose the mountain Bashan.

She thought of the sacrificial act: Korban.


She sang the praise as once did the mother Hannah

By the almond blossom candlestick with the oil

In the sanctuary, and she fed on manna.

Mary Magdalene with the dear soul

Was full of longing for the young man, 

The human child with the good name,

And she had warm dreams of love.


The kingdom of heaven has come near!

The sun smiled through the window.

How beautiful she was! Her hair was floating,

As she washed herself by that water barrel.

Messiah, come to me, come to the pious,

Grant me the bliss of blisses.

Come to me like a dear child,

And be a healer to my sore pains.


The holy of holies: is that forbidden?

There hung a curtain red with purple cloth,

Of blue linen and scarlet;

In the room was incense and perfume.

God is God of the living and not of the dead,

As she knew from the book of the Jews.

She was once baptised in the green Jordan,

That now she thought of carpets and loops.


And Magdalene drank a little wine,

But not of strong intoxicating drink.

The deposit was of ivory,

The virgin's mirror she remembered.

She became aware of the back, the leg,

From head to toe, every joint,

The nerve, the muscle and the sinew of the flesh;

Within it walked the soul of Magdalene.


She walked on a carpet-soft walk,

Crystals on the walls and jewels.

Sudden red on her white cheek:

Forgive me, O Love of God, for all my faults!

I will praise Love in song

And with the dance of my soul.

Make me the embodiment of psalms

And my slender hands to palms!


When Martha of Bethany on bare foot

Comes up or on the donkey's fill

To this castle and brother Lazarus:

Mary Magdalene after penance

Jesus will satisfy her with the kingdom of heaven.

But she herself, the miracle sweet,

To wet Jesus' feet with the dew of tears


And dry them again with her long hair.

The soul hoped that God would forgive her

The loose way of life in all these years.

O, Magdalene had loved very much

With all her strength, with all her might,

With all her heart and soul and mind.

She said, The Love of God command me!


The beautiful disciple of Galilee

Walked now by the green Sea of Galilee

In a white dress, with gold from Idumaea

Adorned. How well the linen suits her,

But inside she longs for Judah.

The wind in her hair with star diadem blows,

She wears the morning star on her diadem

And dreams of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.


She took the orange shawl 

And a white cloak, walked alone

By pomegranate trees in the fragrance

And fig trees in the wide grove

And sat down and read in the book of Psalms,

She sat by an olive tree on the stone

And sang while the sun hid her,

Come, Simon, in springtime to this garden!


Magdala shimmered in the sunlight.

On the Sea of Galilee a white swan

Came close to the green-lined shore,

Moved on gently arching waves.

She looked with unconcerned face

Towards the snowy mountains of Bashan:

There I will rest in a cave one day,

To the third heaven with my soul I beseech!


The peaceful call of the doves

In the treetops of the red-leaved beeches

She heard and from silver-green arbours

The twittering of robins. On the white tip

The wind must have plucked it? I have faith,

She said, in the sign on the rocky peak.

I wish that I could fly like a sparrow

To Jesus over the Sea of Galilee.


Then Magdalene wept hot tears

With longing for the human order of love.

In her heart a fire, such longing,

Such as Solomon did not write more earnestly:

My Simon! All the blood in my veins

Cries aloud for thee. I will open the seven seals

And in the flame of the Master's eyes

Melt away. O by the Immaculate Lamb!


The two finely arched eyebrows

Astonished she raised like a question:

Could not one of the women die

Not in the district of Jerusalem-Betphage?

Flowed the blood of the morning dew

From the prophets to the last day:

Yea, from Zechariah even unto Abel.

The Word became flesh is more than a fable.


The Word is like the seed of a tree,

Which is sown, and becometh trunk and crown,

There the doves of a dream nest,

Said the beloved of the Son of Man,

Draw me forth, come through the space

From thy jasper-red celestial throne

And hasten to me where you are on earth,

Come to me, shepherd of the flock.


O Lord and Master of my poor soul!

I have a vessel here with anointing oil

And am about to spill it. Thou commandest

Out of thy gentle humility, that I sit

By thy side, marry thee to me!

Grant according to thy mercy,

That I may anoint thee with myrrh, 

That would be comfort to me in the barren drought.


Magdala is the castle of Magdalene,

The witness of Messiah's resurrection;

She walked by the Sea of Galilee; the swans

Of sobbing song from the wafting

Are white there. In Mary's veins

Is hot throbbing of amorous blood!

And Magdalene in the Godhead rests.


Jerusalem she has seen in a dream,

The Mount of Olives and indeed the place of skulls.

She would like to stand like the mountain herself

Believing that she would always have love,

In purest linen that never fades.

In heart, mind and soul Jesus save!

If the Son of Man freed her from the spell,

Blessed would be the blessed one.


In the morning she saw in the blue sky

Spheres of morning red, one above the other,

Three planes of clouds, a multitude of clouds

As of lambs around the lamb of honour;

Then by the morning star she saw the tumult

Of celestials, the Spirit above the sea

In praise: and the angel Siala

Came down to Mary of Magdala.


The pure disciple of Galilee

Walked in the footsteps of Jesus, the Messiah.

She held the purple cloth of Idumea

Probably around the gold-built strength of Elijah.

South to the sweet paradise of Judah!

To the goal of faith! In the blood of Mary

Was always such a fervent desire,

To hang on the cross with Jesus Christ.


My God in heaven, nevertheless happened

On me the inscrutability of the will

Of God's Love. - In Samaria

She will quench her thirst at Jacob's well,

Where a Samaritan woman recently saw

The Saviour Jesus fill a bucket

With water that flows to eternity

And quenches the thirst with bliss!


In the morning the Jordan's wave flowed down,

As tears from the stars of her eyes,

The eyelashes were like the morning brightness,

The feet are like vastness stretching,

The legs are as of the wild gazelle.

In the heart of Magdalene's intimacy

All was pure Eden, pure South.

She was still a little tired in the morning.


The fragrance of Saba was her scent,

Her eyes were like the calyxes of almond blossom,

Her dress was sunlit in the blue air.

The morning-dust heaped hands, 

Which she probably still lifts above her tomb,

(After early morning hunts for the roe)

She held folded before her trembling heart.

She walked on feet of golden hearts.


She passed through the district of Ephraim

And passed by the grove of Arimathea.

The celestials of all Mahanajim

Prepared Mary already for Judah.

Let God's wrath and anger pass by,

For Jesus walked in Ituraea

And took up the cross to make atonement.

The soul of that beautiful one trembled.


On the amulet was an almond stone,

Which she once received from Simon Peter.

In the south, the grove of Sion emerged,

Daughter of Jerusalem, the roofs of the temple,

The temple roofs. O Lord God, hear my cries,

In my blood is sorrow swallowed up,

Promise me that redemption is near,

Messiah, only through your sacrifice!


On my shoulder glows all Eden

With all the trees and the fruits of gold.

So loosen thou the tongue of my speeches,

My Master, be thou my dream's delight,

Where I am adorned with flowering roses,

Where the morning sphere rolls,

And sing praises with Samuel‘s Hannah

And have thy blood for wine, thy body for manna.


Feed me then, my shepherd, for I am a sheep

And weary, and would rest upon the Mount of Olives.

Behold, my eyes are so full of sleep,

Thou hast rested even on the Sabbath day from doing

Of the creation of the world; which then concerned me:

Thou didst create me on the sixth day as Eve

From a dream of Adam, my Kephas.


She did not know what she was saying dreamily:

I will erect acacias for thee

To the cross and lined with red gold

Like blood. You must seal my limbs for me;

I am eternally surrounded by light.

The clear waters of Salim's baptism

Renew for me in the sea of Kittim.


And Magdalene saw all at once

Messiah Jesus hovering over the Mount of Olives

And golden light all the heavenly hall,

Moses, Elijah quivering at his sides:

Three days I will rest in the whale,

Then rise again and enter into life everlasting.

You will be at my side:

In God's harp a golden string.


Then was a thunder and a lightning, weather

Was over the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem

Like a pillar of cloud, and the Saviour

Appeared like fire and was pleasant.

Where were the gods of Canaan?

When God Himself said, My Son, sounded with resounds

From heaven, I am well pleased with thee!


Then she spoke like the daughter of Phanuel,

Shall a sword pierce through my soul?

Must I be stronger than a rock?

Shall I bring myself like a lamb to the slaughter?

Then will I rest in the bosom of Israel,

Then will I rise again and sing psalms

According to the sages: Beautiful youth, lilies,

The mute dove strange on the islands.


And Magdalene lifted herself up in the womb

And went in her flowing robe

To the golden gate of Jerusalem, 

Like Joachim's wife, Anne. She said: I am

Like a narrow gate, and I shall abide

Eternity, and death is my gain,

I am in heaven in love with the Master

Jesus, who is Lord of all spirits.


She passed like a beautiful day

By Millo's stones, Sion's rampart.

The golden cicada of Ziklag

Was ornament on the garment with wide fall.

That I wear the girdle of my love

And the hem of the garment like the sound of cymbals

And pomegranates, I have sought God,

To offer me a ripe fruit.


Let me see the heavens, the firmament,

Jerusalem and the ends of the earth.

I was shattered in dreams before Kittim,

God lifted me up with lily-white hands

And showed me the world from the kingdom of heaven,

Which will one day turn to good.

God adorned me with pure gold of Sheba

And showed me the throne-seat of Bathsabee.


She went along the road to the lamb‘s gate,

Then she saw before the gate the beautiful pool,

Five halls were there, a choir was singing

Of celestials from the nearby kingdom of heaven,

There was a golden reed waving on the water.

An angel of God on the water soft

Ascended and descended, lightly stirring the waters

And praised the God of Judah and of Asher


And all the other tribes of Israel.

The heavenly one was a pillar of fire

And was founded on the white rock.

From Sion's groves an owl called.

The angel said, That I roll the waters,

Is given me by the Love of God.

The voice was like a lisp, far from mockery.


There was a man already thirty-eight years

Sick for a long time: and there he went with his bed

On his shoulder, because the faithful true

Power of God healed him. Save my soul,

Said Magdalene with golden hair

To God in the roaring, flowing place,

Raise me up again from the floods of water,

Messiah, you yourself must bleed for me.


And Magdalene went with almond eyes

And gleaming sandals on her feet

And hands white as snow. And she wanted to suck

Wisdom from heaven's breast, sweet.

God wants to comfort like a mother! I want to be good

To the child of God. With my mouth 

From Sion I will greet Mount Bashan,

The seas and shores of Javan.


Then she walked the streets of Jerusalem,

And wept happily, to the pearly gates.

She wanted to abandon herself to the Saviour,

That he might crown her with the flower of life.

There was the key of David to touch.

On golden streets a choir walked:

The singer, the string-player

Walked there, and one beat a tambourine.


She was a word in her body's manna,

When she found disciples

From Galilee in the city: Susan

Walked there in pure fine linen,

And by her side walked Joan,

Mary Magdalene stood alone

In the midst of them both on the white stone.


O Judah! you appear in pure beauty,

At thy gate my blood throbs loud.

From your harp the master lures sounds,

My soul will be well again.

Crown me with thy love-red jasper,

Soothe my love's rage

And give me gentleness and quiet humility

And the longed-for consolation for my melancholy.


To the Gihon spring in paradise

She went, in her soul was a thirst.

Tigris and Euphrates and Pischon flowed out

The water of life for the princes of the Jews,

But Magdalene sprinkled on the fleece

The dew of Sion. (I will stand by her at the door.)

She is like Noah's ark

Now by the waters of the pool of Siloam.


Holy temple of Jerusalem!

How faithful is thy gate's pillar stone,

Boaz and Jachin stand there. Pleasant

Of thy gleam as of wine I am made.

My Christ from the manger of Bethlehem

Shall be King in the place of Sion

And sit on the throne of Solomon

And be more. But where is he, where?


Magdalene with the pomegranate fruit,

Magdalene of the golden hill,

Magdalene sought by the Lord,

Magdalene with the Virgin's Mirror,

Magdalene of the Bay of Tyre,

Magdalene with the seventh seal

And stones on the golden girdle of the mind 

Is dear to the Messiah Jesus.


The Lord has come to serve,

The princess herself became God's handmaid.

Twelve times ten thousand hosts of seraphins

And cherubs have lamented aloud

For Jesus! the Messiah beloved of Judaism,

Messiah, to whom the resurrection is imminent

After his unearthly crucifixion,

O God's earthly sorrow and heaven's heaven!


Mary Magdalene wanted to go

Wrapped in her blissful body

To her sister in Bethany.

The sadness of the soul was quieted

By a flame-like celestial

With a face in the likeness of God,

From one wing balsam oil drizzled

And from the other rushed: Raphael.


She met on the way in the sunlight

The disciple Mary Cleophaeus

And next to her, with a lovely face

The disciple Mary of Jacob,

And Magdalene went with them, closely 

Followed by angels. O that I might see the Messiah,

At the side of the pious, Jesus in the midst,

The Christ I will see in Martha's little hut!


There was Bethany, the place of Martha,

Sister Magdalene's house of stone

And tamarisk wood rose there.

And Magdalene in a fine robe

Wrapped in linen, saw the castle, the refuge.

O that in her pure soul would remain

The morning sea of sisterly love!


Like sweet pollen from the bee's trunk,

So from her lips flowed praise.

Red cowslips blossomed on the vine,

The white Magdalene walked along.

The earth was like a manna bowl,

But from the clouds of heaven came a sound,

O Magdalene! I love your name

Forever and ever, amen.


And Magdalene arrived at the house

Of Martha and of the sick Lazarus.

And in those days the man died.

And Martha went out to the sepulchre on foot

And beheld Jesus the Messiah then,

Who gave her a sweet kiss of love.

But Mary Magdalene stayed

In the house, she loved Jesus Christ.


And Jesus said unto Lazarus, 

Arise from death and go in peace.

Together they went to the house. 

Give me drink, for I thirst in this world,

Jesus said to the sister. Eternally live

In God, the prince in heavenly places.

Then Magdalene and the many Jews 

Heard of the fulfilled goals of faith.


With one accord they sat together,

Magdalene sat at the long table

With Jesus, who was near her soul,

The Mother of Jesus sat there, and a fish

Lay before her, and at the cup of wine happened

A miracle, Martha sat there fresh as spring,

At her side sat the poor man Timon,

And Peter sat there, also called Simon.


And Lazarus was alive again,

Who had risen from death,

He sat there in new linen clothes.

The mother of Mark and the girl Rhode

Shake hands with the newcomers:

To the girl to whom Jesus said, Talita

Kum, from the city of Jerusalem, Tabita.


And Joseph Barnabas came from Kittim,

The Son of Consolation came from Paphos.

John came from the place of Ephraim,

James came from Ashdoth by the sea.

O the camp of God in Mahanaim!

The angels of God were hovering bright and high

Around Jesus and the Mother of Jesus 

And Mary Magdalene around the mouth.


And Magdalene said, To the Lord 

And Prince of Life I would read his words 

From the mouth, I have such a thirst

For eternal bliss in Eden.

The Christ said: I will stand in the door,

Called the beautiful door, to the temple where

The entrance is to Solomon's hall.


And Jesus said, I have very much suffering

To bear the cross to death

And to the resurrection in bliss!

Like dew born from the dawn

Are my children. To the beloved maiden

Magdalene said the Master of hosts,

I know thee, and know thy doings,

And thou shalt rest in my heart.


And Peter said, Even if I should die,

I would never depart from thee.

O blessed is he who the breasts of Mary

Of milk and honey from the heavenly realms

With the lips of a child kissed with love!

And Magdalene said, I would like to be like you

As a maid to the servant of God, far from pride

With my tears wash him on the wood of the cross.


And Jesus went. And Magdalene went

In all her marvellous beauty

To the city of Jerusalem. But I sing

Sweet notes to the prince of my love,

I softly strum the strings and sway

To dance, that the Saviour may crown me

With life in eternity with God;

But this earthly existence is like a mockery to me.


I will walk in my friend's footsteps,

That the King of Israel may embrace me,

I will buy ointments for the suffering of Christ

And walk upon the sea with my rock.

I was baptised in the name of Jesus,

That the Love of God may always show me

The way to heaven and the Holy Spirit.


I threw myself into the cold arms of many,

But now I am in the safe haven

Of God's Love with my spirit. Have mercy!

The word spoke over my soul.

I hear a voice, a warm one,

You will arrive in Paphos in the port,

But then return to Judah and preach the gospel.


Mary Magdalene went there,

The Mother of Jesus walked the paths with her,

Susan walked in a gentle spirit

With them. Over all was the grace

Of God's Love. And she said, I have

Been in the Jordan by the bath

And went from my house in Galilee

To the crucifixion down into Judea.


A tyrian gold-fringed purple shawl

She threw around her ivory shoulders,

She walked in myrrh and perfume

And was as fine as a Cyprus flower

And knew the living book

And drank Messiah's blood like wine

And ate Messiah's body like bread

And sang hallelujahs of praise.


She had such suffering in her soul,

And her eyes became wells of tears:

The Christ is given to the Gentiles,

And Jews stand there with lions' manes,

But the Shepherd shall feed the sheep

And also the lambs, it came Magdalene

From her soul at Gabbata.

She carried herself up to Golgotha.


There hung lifted up on the cross the Saviour,

The Christ of God, Jesus the Messiah!

There he suffered all the suffering and sang

The psalm of suffering and spoke to the heart of Mary,

The disciple is your son. There like an isle

Came a cloud. By the power of Elijah

Jesus cried, Eli, Eli! and, I thirst!

He died. And then God rescued him.


This is the King of the Jews for evermore!

Cried Magdalene with loud weeping.

They marvelled how she acted

And how the beautiful one's wet eyes shine.

Joseph of Arimathea indeed

Took Jesus' body and wrapped it in linen,

And Magdalene like a sweet May

Gave many a spice to the burial.


And Magdalene had a dream

And saw spirits asleep rise,

Saw King David, root of the tree,

And Miriam blowing like a flame

And Aaron with the bells on his hemline

And pomegranates, and saw Moses walking.

And Adam went, who was like unto Kephas,

And in the beauty pure as the earth, Eve,


And out of the grave arose Solomon,

And in the vale floated Sulamit,

Elijah walked in a purple robe thus,

Deborah sang a resurrection song.

Eternal life began where

Messiah rose from the dead,

Who in Jerusalem walked by the sepulchres,

To save all the children of God.


And Magdalene and two disciples

On the first day of the week went 

To the tomb, the body in the pure linen

To anoint. Dear Magdalene, you

Hoped to see Jesus the Messiah inside

In the tomb once more in peace,

And your hopes were otherwise fulfilled.

But the rock tomb was strangely open.


And Jose's mother was with her, Mary,

And with her went Salome the Christian.

Jerusalem, of thee Jeremiah sang,

Once a princess white as the snow

And reddish as the flame of Elijah,

Thou wast the consolation of woe:

An angel sat by the loosed bands

And said, Jesus Christ is risen!


Peter and John were already 

At the tomb, and there it was empty.

But they would be at Pentecost in May

Together in Jerusalem

And be witnesses of the resurrection. Sea

And earth and sky with the host of stars

God once created in the name of Jesus Christ

And all the people who came to happiness.


But now Mary went into the park,

As Magdalene had been called since childhood.

There she saw a gardener, and in the marrow

Of life she trembled. O pure fleece,

Dewed with tears, that she hid!

The golden hair's cascade flowed down,

For this makes Magdalene more beautiful

Than Rachel with the lamb at the well-hole.


He said, Magdalene, do not touch me.

Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended

Into the kingdom of heaven to my God, where I

At his right hand will sit, and will manifest myself

As the Saviour once intimately to thee,

For it is I whom thou didst dry 

The anointed feet with the golden hair.

So walk, greet me the apostles,


And say that I am risen!

And Magdalene with a soul in love,

The king of Israel within her mind

And on the cloth jewels and ornaments,

Walked now towards Galilee,

So humbly obeying the command

Of the Risen One and Conqueror,

And said there, Ye people, dear children!


She was at home by the Sea of Galilee

In her beautiful castle of Magdala.

Of a king from the orient stands

The shell there of the waters Kauriala.

But you, Lord! cried Magdalene (late

In the evening the rock Gischala glowed far away)

But you, Lord! You are the King of Israel

In a robe like white enamel,


And thine eyes are as flames of fire,

And out of thy mouth comes a sharp sword.

She went with Simon Peter there,

Who often sailed on the lake in a boat,

Where once the disciples swam in the waves

In a storm suddenly stirred up,

And Jesus came like a white tower


Of ivory, commanding the wind and the sea.

And Simon Peter said, I swam

To the Risen Lord, who went

On the hem of the sea, like the morning sun shining

The hair of his head and his robe, and the Lord said

And true Prince of Life to the pious one,

Lovest thou me? and more than the rest?

But I would wander through Italy


And find my death on the cross in Rome.

So shall be built upon a stone

The Christian community, like the cathedral

Built on my own bones.

Thus he spoke in the Mayan aroma

By the Sea of Galilee. Mary fine,

Whose name was also Magdalene,

Said, I proclaim our Jesus Christ.


Archfather David once sang these psalms:

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

There are the springs and the grove of the palm tree,

On the golden hem of the heavenly sea

The pasture of the lambs and the pasture begin,

It is all illuminated by the morning star

Messiah. Solver, fortress and solid rock

Is Jesus and the King of Israel.


The gate of paradise, the gate of heaven

Did open the Master, who sits on the throne

At the right hand of God. God said, Jhehi Or!

Let there be light! once, and the Son of Man

(Surrounded by the celestials in choirs)

Created emerald stars, crystal seas

And a jasper-red morning sphere.


In the crystal sea a bustle

Was like in the heavenly Genezareth.

A Prince of Peace on a white horse

To the bride comes Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

God is and opened the third heaven,

From whence the Holy Ghost blows down

And as Wisdom abides in the soul,

Who believes in Jesus as God's Love.


CANTO II


As long as the sun he shall live

And as the moon and in the firmament

The stars that weave the soft glow of light

And sing of the covenant testament:

In the grain of the ear and in the blood of the vine

Jesus is present as the light

Well internalised by God's children.


The disciples and apostles are sent,

Virgins and disciples are sent,

And missionaries are sent to every land,

The islands are abundantly blessed

By the promise. O as the sand

On the sea and as the sky is embroidered

With stars, are the children of God many

In the bliss of the goal of faith.


Many are called by the Lord to serve,

Only a few are chosen by God.

When Peter knelt at the temple steps,

Then was he doused with scorn,

Yet he said, Jesus, your hands created

The heavens, and trumpet and bassoon

Sound at the throne through cherubim,

And seraphim flaming to thee.


The Master would send Magdalene

With an angel from Mahanajim,

Girded with gold at the loins of the mind,

To the beautiful island kingdom of Kittim,

That there she might do signs with her hands

And work miracles, and preach of Ephraim

And preach of Judah, and of the sufferings

Of the Messiah and the resurrection of the Gentiles.


Andrew had already left Betsaida

As far as Tyre, where the port was

To the sea, and spoke of the Son of Man

To the Gentiles as the Word made flesh,

Who sitteth at the right hand of God upon the throne

And is an ever faithful refuge,

Around Jesus' throne seat circles the starry host,

At Christ's feet roars a wide sea.


In Syria, in a desert

The Saviour appeared to a soldier on a horse,

Whom he greeted in his light,

Why persecutest thou me and mine, Saul?

I say that if only your soul would repent,

They'd tear their mouths off you, too,

Thou shalt yet see the kingdom of heaven, Saul;

But from now on I call thee Paul.


And Joseph went by Paul's side,

Who had been called Barnabas,

Meaning Son of Consolation in

The language of the land, and he was indeed

Called from Cyprus by the spirit

Of the Messiah, who appeared unto him manifestly

With his glory in a dream,

As he slept on Cyprus by the sea's edge.


And Peter and Andrew together

Dangered across the sea in a boat,

Where above them a pillar of flame

Appeared in the awakened dawn,

And in the firmament white clouds floated,

And Simon Peter cried, Lord of hosts,

On my way to the mission in Rome

Let me see Kittim in the May air.


To the east of that island of Cyprus lay

The key islands in the green sea,

Above them was the sunlight in the daytime.

They set sail for the island there, hence

It is called Cape Andreas to this day. Legends,

Pagan myths and many a tale

Are told about Cypriot gods.

Hear of the first-born from the dead,


Of Jesus Christ who is risen!

So preached the brothers in the Lord.

This is the love of God! That ye may know,

The love of God above all seas

I have seen walking, Jesus Christ,

Who has given us the morning star.

Thus they spoke on Salamis' shore

Of everlasting mercy and grace.


And Magdalene like a morning star

Clothed all in her hair of gold

Walked over the troubled seas,

Where white foam rolls many a wave,

Crowned with sweet glory from the Lord

(For she was in love with Jesus),

Finally came to the shores of Kittim, 

By the Petra rock near Paphos-Ktima.


Adorned to Olympus was with may

The island where the Pedhieos flowed.

She went to consecrate the whole land

In the sign of God. On the mountain sprouted

The cedar and the olive tree, rows of rings

She danced by the cypresses and enjoyed,

After she undressed, she enjoyed indeed,

She bathed alone in the pool that was hidden.


And Peter took from Petra tou Romiou

A boat and sailed towards Rome.

And Magdalene went in peace

By groves of olive trees and by the stream,

Watching birds in the lime groves,

Feeding on the heavenly aroma.

No one saw the white lily, the red rose,

Praying by the Fontana Amorosa.


She drank of it: O Jesus, my love,

I love thee better than I love me,

That I may ever abide in thy love,

My dear God in heaven's kingdom, give,

Love me, and shake me not through the sieves,

That I may write letters of thy love:

In thy love is the principality,

How sweetly saith the gospel.


Then she ate a ripe pomegranate fruit,

Delicious red pearls are the seeds.

I searched long for the body,

Of the Messiah, found stars within.

I look out from this bay of the sea,

A white veil blows in white distance;

Though the Cypriots cry, There, there!

In Jesus the kingdom of heaven is near.


Then came to the island Lazarus,

The disciple Mary Cleophae,

And on her right side went on foot

The disciple Mary Salome.

They greeted each other with a kiss of love.

A boat lay on the shore of the sea,

And shells lay there in a pearly sheen,

And even the sea wore a white wreath.


They sat down once by Latchi,

And around them sat young Cypriots,

Then they spoke to them again and again

Of God: that risen from the dead

Be Jesus Christ; and they sang songs,

With them sang God's heavenly messengers,

A hallelujah and a hosanna.

They drank red wine and fed on manna.


Orange groves in the morning red

Gifted all the land with their fragrance.

Just as in paradise once offered

The Messiah, risen from the tomb,

The fruits of life and spoke of the commandment

Of love; and as little birds of the air

Well nest in the tree; so is the Word.

And Magdalene went again to the port.


Mary Salome got into the boat,

Mary Cleophae stood by the sail,

And Magdalene in the morning glow

Swarmed with white-winged sea-birds

And golden with the sunrise

Went on board, and by the stars' rule

The soft tide of the waves moved,

Shortly after the cockcrow as red as blood.


The saint of heaven, disciple

Of the Messiah Jesus, sang the psalm song,

Thou hast drawn me out of the sea into

Heaven, and with you I am not afraid,

I hold the word ever in my mind

As the primordial creative sound,

As thou hast created the kingdom of heaven and earth

And heavenly things for the shepherd of the flock.


Surrounded am I by wild floods of water,

The deep waters are up to my throat,

What burden can I bear?

Oh God! I call to you with my soul,

Thou wouldst once bleed for me!

So base me on stones and jewels.

Then draw me up from the waters

To the heavenly place with the pearly gates!


The one deep calls to the other deep,

One wave calls to another wave.

But who would hear me if I call?

Thy temple is measured with the cubit,

The weight and measure of the flood. So ooze

Salvation from heaven! The gazelle

Plays with the lion in the Cretan field,

And in the skies the seagulls praise thee.


The Lord went over the water 

And commanded the storm to be still.

And Magdalene, lately grieved to death,

Afflicted and in fears all alone,

Was sure that her Jesus of hosts

Is her saviour at all times and the stone

Of redemption, if only she would remain in faith.

The doves may nest on the rocky isles,


But where shall the child of man make his bed

In love? Is there love in life

More than promise? You will save,

Cried Magdalene, in the blood of the vine

And in the manna from the heavenly places:

When the floods rise up to my throat,

Thou wilt show thyself to be Love of God.


O Jesus, in you love I find fidelity

And am sealed for eternity.

Thou countest the tears of all my repentance

And guide me all the days of my life.

I hope that one day I will rejoice greatly

In unspeakable sweet bliss.

Pour on my head the oil of grace

And open for me the gate to paradise!


Meanwhile a letter went to Paul's sister

From Paul, who was in Cyprus at the time,

Since Jesus called me to my ministry,

The hope of the resurrection indeed

I proclaim. That my soul slept

In the third heaven glorious forever,

That I wish with tears streaming down my face,

But I must suffer at last in Rome.


And Magdalene arrived on Crete

In the port of Phoenix, and there Cretans cried,

We saw a man on the sea,

That was the prince of lilies in the bright ether,

The prince of lilies passed by, and then

Comes this fair one to the island later,

You must be our beautiful goddess Venus. -

No, but our Jesus Nazarenus


I proclaim with all my heart,

With soul and mind and all my strength

As the love of God, who with seven candles

Throned in heaven and in the grapevine juices

And bread gives itself, the feet golden.

If angels once reefed the sails of souls,

We'd be on the morning star!

Magdalene cried aloud in the Lord.


But there sat seven priestesses

By a fire around the chaste flame.

Magdalene spoke with love within,

By the crystal sea and by the throne of the Lamb,

I will make disciples of the Cretans!

Then from a small bough

Quickly a snake bit her in the hand.

But she looked at the Saviour unblinking,


On the cross she saw her Saviour within,

Then she simply waved that snake

With her hand into the high fire. Meanwhile

She caught sight of the serpent on a pole,

The honourable serpent above this isle,

Of which in the Mosaic song

Is sung by the prophet Moses.

Then it was folded into a rose of flame,


Folded up with red petals.

Then Magdalene said thus, Cretans,

Cretans, once upon a time

The word came in flesh, who rules over the ether.

Whoever looks at Jesus will never become obsolete,

But will live forever! But later

The inexpressibly sweet bliss,

Before, for a time, a heavy sorrow.


Many mighty things in heaven and on earth,

Nothing more powerful than the Son of Man,

The Christ and the Shepherd of his flocks,

Who sits on his throne for ever and ever.

Magdalene spoke with sweet gestures,

And her cheeks bloomed like the poppy,

Forsake the many gods of Mycenae

And come to the true Godhead! said Magdalene.


We are of a divine race.

The Godhead is not silver or gold,

But deeply merciful and just.

In the name of Jesus Christ behold

The handmaid of God as well as the servant of God,

He has willed redemption for the world.

There are no longer Jews or Gentiles,

There are no longer boys or maidens,


There are children of God alone now.

For this is why it is said in the Holy Scriptures,

But ye shall be as the angels.

And as for wisdom and power:

God himself could raise you up,

Children! Leave off the poison

Of idol sacrifice and mysteries,

Believe in the sweet gospel.


Who was the prince of lilies whom ye saw?

Probably Simon Peter in glory,

Around whom the bright angels of God waved

And who sailed, in the soul's sorrow,

To Rome, to stand in the marble city

And proclaim Jesus' eternity,

He was the lily above the Mediterranean.

But Magdalene said no more.


She climbed into the boat, where in the meantime

The two Marys lay in a deep sleep.

And Magdalene, as the beautiful maiden

With fairer disposition, stood in the blessing,

She said, and in her voice sorrow,

Now, dear ones, let us stir again,

We will sail on and not sleep,

May keep us the shepherd with the sheep


Of heaven that hath founded on pillars

The earth and the wide ocean

The boundary set. So let us make haste.

They set sail, stretched a tarp,

They heard a herd of seals howling.

But she saw and said, That I may exhort

The heathen, therefore I hasten to Gaul.

They girded themselves gold at the waists


Of the soul and went out to sea,

Then the silver-white tide rose on board.

Then Magdalene's heart was heavy,

Her heart was heavy, she saw the fleshly word

Walking on the water, and so much

She longed for this haven of love,

Then he looked like a lamb in the light,

That she leapt into the water and swam to him.


She bound herself about the upper garment,

For she was naked, and swam through the warm water.

She fixed her eyes steadfastly,

Parian white marble was no paler

Than her beloved's body, as on land

Jesus, whom she once saw in Asser,

That is in Tyre. O the delight!

Thou art the fairest of the fair!


And Jesus came and laid his hands

On Mary Magdalene's head

And said, I am the beginning and the end

And Prince of life. Yes, thou hast believed,

And therefore I have always been with you. 

Turn thee now unto the ark, that thou be not bereft,

My virgins from the sea are stolen from thee,

Mary Cleophaeus and Salome.


Then she looked at Italy in the distance,

The beautiful country. They first had to pass through 

A strait. Heavenly being from the morning star!

Cried Magdalene, Speak to the stone,

That it may not crush us like almond kernels.

The path to eternity leads alone

Through the narrow gate, through the narrow gate,

Thus spoke the beautiful Magdalene words


Of life everlasting. The two stones,

Often called Scylla and Charybdis,

Let her now through. And together

The three Marys sang, each in a white robe,

Drunk with joy as if with wine,

Shimmering in the glow of the noonday sun,

The song of the rock moved by God

And sang it to the king of Israel.


Tyrrhenian Sea! The morning dew sank

In your gently moving tide of waves,

The waters were blue, the sky was blue.

And Magdalene became cheerful

And suddenly saw a marble building

Appearing, resting in the ether,

Yes, a temple shining above Rome,

A white starry vault crowning it.


They arrived at Ostia, the port,

They would pass through the gates of Rome

And preach in the much-famed place.

But it was in the time of Emperor Nero,

When Peter preached the word of God.

The Lord appeared in the gates to Magdalene

And said unto her, How I long,


That Gaul also may be converted to me!

So go with the boat across the sea,

That through thee my multitude may increase,

So talk of bliss after woe,

Blessed is he who honours the Messiah

And believes in him. Mary Cleophae

And Salome take with you to the Celts

And preach the Saviour to all the worlds.


They left Italy again

At the time of the rising of the golden sun.

Then they saw Sardinia in the sea,

And they felt a quiet delight,

When they beheld Gaul afar,

Where the Cimmerians and the Iberians

Were transformed into worshippers of God.


And Magdalene said, Once in Dion

I went there and sighed from my soul

For my beloved Prince of Sion

And King of Israel, whom many jewels

Very gloriously adorn. Now in the Gulf of Lyon

I obey the dear Lord's commands,

Where white seagulls hover in the skies,

There I speak of the key and of the lion


Of Judah and of David's son to the people.

The sailboat arrived in the harbour.

But they heard bells ringing softly,

The pomegranate beauty remembered

On a forgotten word, which she wanted to interpret,

And then she told the people,

That Eve was born in the dream of Adam's flesh

And walked very chastely,


Till from the serpent lifted up on the wood

She took the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

She heard in the Mosaic song

How from Eve to Adam came

The fruit. Then her soul was troubled,

And she blushed with sudden shame,

I wonder if I was Eve, the sinner,

And am Mary now, the disciple?


But she suffered pain in her soul.

Now they left the sailboat in the port

On the edge of the white-blossomed blue sea,

The light of the noonday sun was golden,

The spray of the sea was white as snow.

Because they have now landed here, therefore

Today it is called Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer.


Then other sailing boats arrived

From Israel to the mission to the Gentiles,

With Marta and a man of God

Named Fronto, a disciple and a son

Of Simon Peter, and then drew near

A bishop who went with Magdalene

Into the province. That I sing the psalms


Of the deer hunted early in the morning to the Gentiles,

I sing to them the psalms of Jesus' passion,

Cried Magdalene, is not to be avoided,

Rather: that I bring the glad tidings

Of the bliss that comes after hard suffering,

For this I am called. And she went

With that man through Avignon.

And Marta went to the forest of Tarrascon.


Yes, the just is like a tree,

That hath sprouted from a seed,

Set by a golden water's edge,

And bringeth forth fruit in his time in the name 

Of Messiah Jesus, and it will be a dream

Of life for the lady of all ladies

In life's imperishableness

Gently lowing down. Sweet bliss!


O happiness from God! Whither then shall I flee,

If the eye of heaven should see me, it would find me

Not in the shade. I would rather serve

And gird up the loins of my soul with gold

Of the soul. Let us but go in Christ,

And glory follow the end.

We will gladly establish the church

Of those whom he has purchased by his blood.


Oh source of nameless rivers of tears!

My heart is crushed, my soul is troubled

And my soul is contrite. Well that I may atone.

There is a steady light on my path.

I anointed the Messiah's feet

And dried them with the hair of gold.

I was often absent in my younger years.


But later Christ himself washed my feet

And dried them with the loincloth.

Bitter world, there will one day be a sweet

Happy glory; after the curse

There will be blessing and pure kisses of love.

Names are written in the book

Of live of those who to the wonder-light

Called Jesus, before his face.


The bishop's name was Maximin,

Was one of the seventy-two disciples,

Who said, Because I serve Christ Jesus,

I hope to be in heaven with the psalm-singers

Where the angels of God walk

And blessed ones are like palm-wavers

And seraphim are like flame to flame

And cherubim by the jasper throne of the Lamb.


Cedonius went to Maximin's side,

They did wondrous works with their hands,

The lame and the crippled could walk again,

Unclean spirits' foul resistances

They were able to put an end to them;

They preached the salvation‘s rock

To the Gentiles and sang for the King of Israel.


O Magdalene! why such sorrow?

After years of loneliness in small hope

Such a shower of joy is promised:

In faith the gates of heaven are open!

But first there had to be suffering, more precisely

The anguish of the soul and that tears dripped,

There was despair and anguish and woeful pain

And gloom and terror in the heart.


All this the soul must endure

And the heavy burden of this whole life.

And Magdalene almost wanted to perish

And hated her life and the world.

Desolation filled her in her blowing

And she longed for a rest

At the sweet breast of the beloved Jesus,

She delighted in the Master's command.


To the heavenly Jerusalem, to the Sea 

Of Genezareth above the firmament,

Where balm blossoms for the soul after woe!

If only Christ knows my soul,

Then I'll see the Sabbath ever

And live forever of the will,

Where in the cloth of liberty I walk to the good

Where the seas of heaven flow.


They founded the Christian community

And built a church in Aix

In the province. But there came 

A princess and a prince in anguish

To Magdalene, who sat on the stone

And sang the psalm melody of the deer,

That is hunted early in the morning.

And had the Man of Sorrows in her mind.


The princess said to the saint,

He and I would like so much to have a child.

Pray for us, dear lady, because

We believe that the angels are around you

By God, that the prayer of the praying

Will be heard. O thou art so sweet and gentle,

Beloved of Jesus you will be called!

Magdalene stood in the glow of the sun.


Through Magdalene's heartfelt prayer

The princess soon conceived a child;

So the Word was sown as seed,

That was as God's eternities old

And ever young, that ever endures

And became a tree in which doves call,

And in the leaves the wind doth leaf.

On the princess's lap sat sweetly the child.


And to Magdalene appeared in a dream

The Lord and said to her, I have chosen

Prince and Princess to serve me.

Every human being was missing,

But God has forgiven all his children.

But Satan is smouldering in hell.

The Christ, born in Bethlehem,

Will show Rome and Jerusalem


To Prince and Princess, rapture them in a dream.

The Lord and Prince of Life in the sign 

Of the cross, whom has in all things

Magdalene (she wanted to be like Jesus)

Justly found. So to make her happy,

Magdalene came in the May-soft light

Blessedly down to the dream of the two,

Promised: She would feed their souls.


Peter had also been called by the Lord

(So says the Magdalene legend)

And appeared on the marble steps,

Folded his hands in prayer,

Which once in the beginning created all the worlds:

I send thee now to the end of the world,

To Gaul, your spirit to the Province,

And in dreams to a princess and a prince.


Worshipful beloved,

O Magdalene! Joyful happiness and peace

The divinity beckon to thy soul,

Thou who art full of the holy spirit

Appeared to guide converts in peace

To guide in blessed lands,

That those who dwell in Rome and in Sion

Are to be looked upon by souls in visions.


And Magdalene now led the soul

Of the prince to the city of Jerusalem,

Where jewels are founded on the cornerstone,

There is the Mount of Olives near at hand.

And according to the Master's and the Lord's command,

Who once was born in Bethlehem,

There is the hall of the Son of David

In the temple, and there is the mercy seat,


With the law there is the ark of the covenant,

On either side are golden cherubim,

The throne of grace is beautifully set thereon.

O the propitiation from wrath and fury

Was concluded after the bath of water

Of baptism by the Christ! Seraphim

Silently sing from the crystal clear sea,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!


With the princess soul was in Rome

Now Simon Peter, strong in grace

Now by the founding fountain walked, by the stream

With name of Tiber then, on it into 

The emperor's park, where in the May aroma

He trembled in the inmost marrow

And spoke to his soul in the sunshine,

There I will be glorified on the wood.


Name of the cross! Inexpressibly dear

Is Jesus! Have you not yet seen him?

I know you love him dearly.

Thou shalt never resist evil;

But have faith and love for the Godhead,

Then thou shalt walk in the path of life.

Increase in knowledge and moreover

Gain wisdom from paradise.


At the Forum Appii, Tres-Tabernae

They went to the disciple's dwelling,

Where Peter often talked with Mark

Of the Gospel. Once the reward

In heaven is given after woe.

The spirit of consolation and mild gentleness

Came softly into the princess's soul.

In Sion, in Sion is laid a stone!


And Magdalene now went with the prince

The judicial stone path Gabbata.

You speak of dill and rue and of mint,

The love of God went to Golgotha

And after death to heavenly provinces!

And Magdalene spoke to the Father,

To Eli there, to the love of God there.

Suddenly the kingdom of heaven was very near.


And Simon Peter went up the seven hills

(By the laurel tree of the Capitol).

The soul of the princess carried the wing

From the angel of God to the Palatine.

But the two of them saw in the etheric mirror

From the cedar grove on the Aventine:

Rome built of white marble stone

On the bones of the saint the future cathedral.


But they floated from Italy,

They floated from the land of Israel

Slowly over to Sardinia,

There they encamped on a rock,

Three moons from Gaul.

Meanwhile, Magdalene fed that little girl,

Magdalene nourished that little child

And carried her gently on wings as of the wind.


She had carried it in a whirlwind

Through a gentle sphere of golden glow

And carried it sweet and gentle

Flowed through with her love's warm tide

And caressed it and was good to the heart,

Illuminated in a moment

And gave the child a sweet happiness.


Sister Marta died. That day

Fronto walked through the forest of Tarrascon

And dreamed of the beautiful place of Betfage

And listened for the sound of the barn owl.

They mourned for thirty days

And prayed that Jesus Christ would give

That Marta's soul may live eternally blessed!


And Magdalene went to the water's edge,

Marseilles rose near the sea.

O Israel, O Israel, my dream!

Thou sweet land of pomegranates heavy,

With olive tree, mulberry tree and fig tree,

With Sea of Galilee, with Bethlehem,

With Jordan, Jabbok and Jerusalem!


How I long for the sweet land,

Where the Messiah stamped his footprints!

A groan was Magdalene's heart,

A stream of tears from Mary's gentle eyes

Floated down her cheek, and a tear

Lifted up an angel in the power of Elijah,

And it became a pearl on the velvet cushion

In heaven's treasure. O she would kiss


The kiss of love on Messiah's mouth!

I sigh and long from a foreign land,

Like a hind for the spring and

Like the gazelle for the ribbon of water.

Ah made me flow Betesda's pool,

Lightly stirred by an angel's hand!

Most of all I wish that I might be refreshed

By the Sea of Galilee in a moment.


And Magdalene and the two Marys

Now took a boat in the direction of Malta,

They could sail with the favour of the wind

Surrounded by pleasant sunlight.

But the youths on Malta cried out,

The goddess of vengeance morning-red,

Of whom the poets sang and the Muses,

Come herself with a pair of Empuses!


The saint commanded the spirits to be silent,

Who rooted and tore at the boys

And went out. But now show

The boys with sanctified conscience

To the beloved of God. Dances

They danced to her. But now hoist the sails.

She went, vipers fled before her step,

And took a sailboat for Cyprus.


But in Cyprus she wrote a letter

Probably to the mother of Jesus, Mary,

Whom the Messiah once called to Jawan,

It was said that Elijah must first come;

Was that the Baptist in the Jordan deep,

John, the son of Zachariah?

The law and prophecy reach out to him.

The word to every psalm melody


Must find fulfilment in the Messiah.

The message was brought to many an island,

To Paphos and Patmos messengers proclaim joy

And all the islands of Javan hear of the Saviour.

But how was death to be overcome?

I had an inkling of it, for once

Messiah Jesus wrestled with death,

Swallowed up death once and for all


And gave us the way of life forever.

This is the resurrection. What is sin?

To be without faith is worse

Than to be without hope. Oh, I would be like the child

That believes all things and hopes all things and never

Lacks love. Oh that I might overcome

And remain eternally in Messiah's love!

I greet thee with the kiss of my love.


And Magdalene climbed the mountain,

Up to Olympus, through the valley of the cedars.

There lay the plain, the earth,

At her feet, and the heavenly hall

Was open above her, and an orbit,

With lily-white clouds without number

Fringed, went over the snowy summit.

She rested under a pine-tree top.


Then she saw coming down to the summit

The pillar of flame, as it once accompanied Moses,

That was at the top of the pine tree

And looked like a red rose

And touched Magdalene at the top;

On either side like two light lots

Two heavenly ones, like lilies white as snow.

And Magdalene surged like the sea.


The voice of Jesus is like the sound of water,

The voice of Jesus makes the mountains tremble.

While the doves' feathers are ruffling,

The foxes rest on the mountain of vines.

Son of man, you cannot change your lot,

Each one bears his own cross. Forgiveness!

God alone can guide you to bliss.

Then it was light around her like the noonday sun.


And Magdalene descended the mountain

In a whitish robe with a red

And she took a shepherd's crook

And listened to the singing of the heavenly messengers.

Then she saw the grave in the distance

Of her brother Lazarus, who rose from the dead,

Once risen by the word of the Saviour.

Kittim! pearly shore surrounded by the sea!


And Magdalene with the almond eyes

And with lips that kissed the Saviour,

Said, Rejoice, beloved, for now you may suck

And may now drink abundantly from the breasts

Of consolation, for good for consolation

Is the mother's breast; and all those who missed

Comfort, they shall now be comforted,

For God will comfort as a mother me.


She spoke at Paphos on the seashore,

I mean, I must first die,

But then my life will be a dream.

I wanted to court the love of God

And for the fruits of life from the tree

Of heavenly paradise; wanted to inherit,

After I have been naked, a garment

Of glory and immortality.


From Paphos-Ktima she went across the sea,

From Olympus to the rock of Carmel,

Which rises straight from the sea, very

Glistening with white sunlight like melting.

From Mount Carmel she saw bright and fair

Far to the mountains of Israel:

O dew of Hermon, ye three fountains of Jordan,

O Tabor and the green waves of the hills!


Now she went to the mountain of Bashan,

For there a cave was prepared for her.

Where in the air the kite circled,

All was loneliness for her soul.

She searched for Messiah's deep plan

And listened for the heavenly command:

The Godhead is not like polished soapstone.

Behold, I lay in Sion a cornerstone.


There was a ram's fleece dyed red

Spread dry her to a bed,

Wax melted on almond blossom candelabra,

A skull lay before that place,

Bedolah resin from the first paradise

Was strung on a golden chain,

A little vial of the rose oil

The dearest treasure was there for her soul.


Now I am still in flesh and blood,

But Christ is risen from death.

I strive for the love of God, well

I will sing the psalms of Zebaoth.

God give me patience and strength and courage,

Glory come like the dawn,

Yea, like the wondrous morning light,

To see face to face the Lord,


I hope to see the King of Israel there,

Though now I see him in a mirror.

Thus she spoke on the high rock,

Which was surrounded by many a hill,

The summit was covered with white enamel.

Then came down with a wing of flame

The angel of God from Mahanajim.

And the place of Karnaiim shook afar off.


If Judah and Samaria,

The Jews and the Gentiles would turn

To the Christ Jesus! Morijah

Would rejoice, and from all the ends of the earth

Rocks and stones rejoice, far and near

Would send the gifts to Jerusalem!

The angel came, and Ashtaroth trembled

At the entrance of the heavenly one of Zebaoth.


The heights danced a dance of joy,

And Magdalene sang Messiah's glory,

Who crowns his love with the myrrh wreath

Of life‘s crown. After life she would be

In glory as with the brightness

Of the morning star over the sea of heaven.

The angel of God came to her hereafter

And greeted her thus, My love, peace!


She shook her hair like a veil

And was wrapped in golden lustre and shimmer.

She longed so much for the Sabbath celebration

In eternity, where sweet rest always

Enveloped her softly. She was like a lyre

Played by masterly hands, never

Was a melody so sweet and soft,

As King David's most beloved tune.


On a cloud the Christ came down

And came to her and broke bread with her

And handed her the cup of salvation, and said again,

This is my body, which I myself offered to you,

This is my blood of the covenant. - Psalm Hymns

From heaven at this moment

Promised her an everlasting bliss.


I have always loved you, Mary,

Therefore I drew you to me with my goodness.

I come to you in the power of Elijah,

To wash thy feet. In mind

I love thee; for as Jeremiah

Said, in whom the prophecy glowed,

I have trodden the winepress of a maiden,

The daughter of Judah to bliss!


And Magdalene said, I am the maid.

Messiah said, You will be the princess.

And she said, I have lamented all my life.

He said, In heaven there is wine of delight.

She said, I was hunted like a deer.

He said, Thou shalt in the morning sunshine

Leave thy womb, thy cave,

Dwelling heavenly in the bliss of the soul!


Messiah ascended on a cloud,

And Magdalene wept tears of joy,

Now the daughter of God's people

Will find her soul's longing fulfilled

And in the light above the morning glow

Pass away, sang the mouth of Magdalene,

I give my spirit into your hands!

God be with me to the end of the world.


I will now to death, to resurrection,

My tears shall be dried,

In heaven I shall see salvation

And a sweet sphere of morning glow

And with the winds of heaven I shall blow,

Yes, eternally happy, through Jesus' blood,

I commit my spirit into thy hands!

God is with you to the end of the world.





PART TWO


Prologue:


I am the happiness of repentance,

That in the atonement thou mayest know thyself.

I lay at Jesus' feet,

Wrapped my hair around

All those who were at Jesus' feet.


I embraced you too

With my golden hair that waved

Like tongues of fire.

I teach you to pray,

I rose from Jerusalem and Eden...


I


POET:


Of princely lineage

Were you born into this vale of tears,

In these nights of sin,

Where our souls' ears

To the word closed, our heart lost.


What have we not stayed

In the dark warm womb of our mothers?

But if they love us not

And cast us out bitterly,

Then into the worldly storm we must go.


Who will save us in the rain of sin

From Satan's temptation?

How will God's blessing be,

Where we have been faithful to the world,

To the wicked ones and demon hordes?


The Mother of the Eucharist

Gave thee loving desire as an inheritance,

For love, O Mary,

Thy cheeks reddened,

When you embrace the flesh in your guilt.


Thy father Syrus

The riches gave further to thee in thy walk.

How weary the shallow

Like bitter almond,

When Mammon hath bought us in vile trafficking.


We inherit our debts

From our parents, who inherit their debts.

Can God yet be patient,

If we woo the world

And corrupt is the demon and the flesh?


MAGDALENE:


Messiah salute thee!

Thou turnest from worldly wickedness

Through the prayer of repentance

To God and ask for purity:

A pure heart alone attains unity.


I will intercede for your sins,

Intercede before the throne of grace.

Let your love flow

Into Jesus' heart, from the Son

Through thy love obtain for thee the crown of life!


I will bless from heaven

Thy heart, with my name surround thee,

To meet thee from within,

Consider my life,

Weave thee in the veil of my tresses.




II


POET:


Brother and sister,

Thou hast loved by the ties of thy blood.

Anointed and beautiful like Esther

Thou stoodest on the shore

Of the Sea of fishes in the land of Galilee.


MAGDALENE:


I was permitted to dwell gloriously

In Magdala in my castle estate.

But wealth cannot spare

And gold is of little use

And worldly possessions are no support.


I will compare the castle

To the enlightenment and deeper knowledge

Of the soul's inner riches,

In the inmost parts on pillows

To kiss in peace the divine spouse!


POET:


Stewardship as a gift

Was given to Marta of Bethany.

Honey from the honeycomb

And bounty of red vines

Thy sister's life and limb did gladden.


MARTA:


The things of this earth

In God's service rightly to manage

Is my duty. I will

Shape the mundane

And hold to Adam or David.


POET:


And Lazarus of Sion

Possessed the third part of your inheritance.

Pleiad and Orion

Behold both fair and fierce,

And God, that Jerusalem never perish.


LAZARUS:


By my prayer I reconcile

The beloved brothers of the Messiah

And Hagar's wild sons

And in the spirit of Elijah

The people, so lamented by Jeremiah.


I will see the unity

Of Abraham's promised star-seed,

Life shall spring forth

And in the name of the Most High

Shall Christian, Muslim and Jew say Amen.


POET:


The sisters and the brothers

Are dear to me, but dearest to me the beautiful one,

She looks down so lovely

And more than all my sons

I love her, that I sing her praises.


MAGDALENE:


What are the ties of blood?

I will gladly show thee favour!

In the Holy Land

To show thee the Messiah,

That thou mayest praise his love!




III


POET:


I greet thee, Magdalene,

And pray set the keynote to my song.

Thou didst dry the tear

That clung to my eyelid,

Now I see thee so fair, so sweet and soft.


MAGDALENE:


I pray in the nights

Of faith and soul and sense

For thee. In golden braids

I go to the Lord of love

And in the presence of Jesus, I am mindful of your love.


POET:


I want to thank you,

Thou hast led me from gloom to delight.

I carry you in my thoughts,

You are as beautiful as the sun,

Would it were possible - more beautiful even than the Madonna!


Sister of all angels,

O let me see you dance in a beautiful dance!

Take hold of the lily branch

Of the song, beautiful with splendour

Of Jesus' heart, wounded by the lance!


I will, O beautiful one,

In thy beauty's glory I'll ly in the bed.

With thy love crown

My inmost places

And pray God to save me from death!


MAGDALENE:


I was beautiful in body

And lived passions and desires.

Devotion to a woman,

Who will deny it?

Who is worthy of love, who will teach it?


I lived in the senses

And in erotic desire and glow,

But burnt up inside

And barren my heart, no blossoming

Of reciprocal love rewarded all my toil.


I quenched all burning,

My carnal desire. But the emptiness

Within I learn to know,

How I desire in vain,

All lust but adds to my gloom.


The more the delights of lust

The more I'm tempted, the deeper into sin

I have descended,

Where I run into emptiness

And on nothingness my life is founded.


To consecrate myself to death,

Who of those who love lust is there?

But God will forgive me,

Free me from seven demons. 

Thereupon I have stayed with the Lord.


POET:


Are body and lust and senses

Like world and flesh reprobate and demons?

Will not the love of God

Dwell in the flesh of man?

Will not the flesh dwell in the Word in heaven?


MAGDALENE:


The body is a ladder,

Let all the senses be transparent

To God's sun, serene

Be thou of love,

Above all, be inwardly mindful.


When the chaste light of God,

Light of God shines, Jesus' seven candles,

Then love in the flesh

In joy and in pain

The light heart of Jesus in your heart.


Then you will find Christ

In poor and lost and children

And cleave to God alone

And be food to the mouths

To hungry hearts, sacrament to sinners.


See the body as a sign,

To behold in it the presence of the spirit,

But not to depart from the spirit

And not trust in the vain

And worship God alone in women.


Now I depart upwards

Into the kingdom of heaven, which is hidden within.

To glory in the glory

Of the Lord, in spite of all sorrows,

God hath called thee in the morning of creation.


POET:


O glorious and beautiful one,

I am in love with thy golden locks

And golden tresses. Sounds

To my song's bells,

To lure all the world by thy beauty.


You know how I long

For thee, without equal in woman's beauty!

Grant me, Magdalene,

Access to the kingdom of heaven,

With thy myrrh strew my brow.


I will in my sins

To thee be a friend, burning Messiah's pinnacle,

Proclaim to the eavesdroppers

The gift of grace,

To gaze upon thee without my senses.


Before thee clasp my hands

I will end my day praying

And the days of old

At thy slender feet

As your worshipper - worshipping God - hail!


IV


POET:


To Christ will I pray,

Who entered into the house of the poor,

The world's scorned,

To take pity on them

With his warm redeeming heart.


He who was afflicted with leprosy,

He wondered what his sins were.

The outcast lamented,

As Pharisees teach,

That he was not allowed to honour the God of heaven.


As St. Francis did,

Jesus embraced the departed,

Who wept, and gave thanks, and laughed.

And with his arm

To the heart of Jesus, said, Have mercy!


MAGDALENE:


Then the hetaera approached,

Despised by all the world as a sinner,

In the emptiness of her heart

And as if famished with thirst,

And saw the Lord God look upon the need.


When Jesus thus bowed down

And declared the rejected to be his friend

And stooped to misery

And showed love, taught

Jehovah's bounty, he was the praiseworthy one.


Yes, all my sins,

Uncleanness, leprosy of my soul cried out,

Thee, Master, would I find,

To join thee, to flee

With thee to hills of balm that blossom!


I threw myself at his feet

With wild passion and hot longing,

To atone for all my sins,

And wept tears of remorse

And felt flames blowing in my veins!


As I kissed the feet,

Then I tasted sweetness with my mouth,

I felt, through Christ,

At my deepest wound

And sinful forsakenness healthy.


JESUS:


I saw the tears dripping

And accepted them like the best nard.

You drew love's glands

From the vial to anoint me,

I love tears of love everywhere!


What do the righteous give

In piety and virtue when they judge?

Rather do I love the wicked,

The simple and the plain,

If they do not renounce the sacrifice of love.


Devotion I always love

And were it also sacrificed by the savages,

Anointed by the glimmer of tears

I walk in climes

Of wildest wilderness, to make Eden there.


MAGDALENE:


How like a desert I am,

Where leopard and panther hiss,

But when I kissed Jesus

With my sighing breath

The feet that smoke from desert wandering,


Grew in me the blossom

Of the myrrh bush, the balsam and the nard,

The dew of love sprinkled

To change my heart

By God's favour to a green garden.


JESUS:


I carry you on angel wings

To the seven seals on the fountain.

On Sion's balsam hills

I will run through the blossoms

As a deer with a gazelle.




V


POET:


O Magdalene, say,

What was in thee the work of demons?

Answer my question.

Satanic legions

Dwell destructively in the world even today.


MAGDALENE:


Thou knowest of the evil spirit

That fell upon Saul to wrath.

But David's praise praised

God evermore as before

As all holiness and peace.


The multitudes of evil devils

Do grievous harm to a soul,

They sow doubts of faith

In God's beautiful grace

And of the manna in the ark of the covenant.


Despair and melancholy,

Unkindness and discontent shall paralyse the soul.

From the black star wormwood

They are dark shadows,

To take from the soul all delight in God.


They cast it into the void

Of vain carnal desires and pleasures,

That not for God's glory

The soul may submit

And is not satisfied with the holy.


The outer forms show

Hollow of all inner content,

They hate hope, silence,

That the heart may unfold

And never grow cold through the ardour of love.


They preach hatred

And celebrate masses of destruction,

Who never let go of war,

They sully all the poetry

Of the Creator and darken every glade.


POET:


You had war in your heart

And yet found God's great peace.

The light of the seven candles

Of the holy one here

Was given to enlighten thy spirit.


MAGDALENE:


The bringer of joy

Delivered me from the misery of my sins

By Holy Spirit's finger,

To proclaim peace,

To bind my heart to God's heart.


JESUS:


I have cast out

By my prayer the full number of demons,

For God wants to love hearts

And dwell in hearts,

In the pure heart enthroned on a white throne.


When I sweep the lodge,

The heart by repentance turn to purity,

The heart to swear allegiance

To the Lord, with God in unity,

God protects it from demonic wickedness.


You must only pray always

And do not defy those who once were the pack of Dathan.

Then I will make thee a prophet

Like David and Nathan:

I cast into the torment of hell Satan!


I have cleansed the heart,

The Holy Spirit moved in,

United in spirit with God,

That no power may separate them,

The heart experiences the joy of resurrection!


POET:


To the palm tree or thuja

You have become in the light's consecration.

Sing hallelujah to Jesus,

That he may free mankind,

To everlasting bliss renew!


MAGDALENE:


I give thee a palm tree

And anoint thee with the oil of the Holy Ghost.

Sing thy love‘s psalm,

My parting in the cave

And the union of God and soul!




VI


MAGDALENE:


Ah eyes full of tears

And a soul full of woeful lamentations

And wistful longing

For old happy days,

But now my brother lies here slain!


He lies bedded in death,

Where Hades feeds him like a lamb!

When will he come who will save him

From the death he suffers,

Who shall separate his body and soul from death?


Would that the Master were near,

Had Lazarus not died for us!

The Lord of the Seven Spirits

Did not leave him worm-eaten,

If Jesus were here, he would not be corrupted!


But now in the shadow of death

And darkness as black as a raven

We have joined ourselves to death.

Come with the shepherd's staff,

O Lord, and lead us to the fountain of life!


What shall we do in the grave,

Sleep like empty shadows in the nights?

Is only the grave our boon,

We poor black sheep

And is Hades alone a haven for us?


Like black bats

We flutter madly in the dark nights,

In the rocky shell

And in the shafts of the grave,

If in the grave we might lay our hearts to rest.


MARTA:


I see the Master approaching

And feel my soul tremble with grief,

For long we have not seen him.

He gives us new life,

He is the vine, we are his branches.


He, beautiful as a flower

That blossoms from the earth, a lily branch,

To his own

Comes to make us all lack

To replenish us with the bread of angels.


MAGDALENE:


The vine and manna,

He gives us water from the well of life.

Messiah! Hosanna!

Let your sun shine

And turn our sufferings into delight!


The wasteland and the emptiness

Of the shadowy realm like flowers blossom!

The storms still, the seas,

Hell's hot glow,

Let the fountain spray new life!


JESUS:


My eyes are filled with tears,

My heart breaks for love's woeful song!

Why do you die, dear one?

My bowels are on fire,

We are friends for life, you and I.


Then I must take pity on thee,

I see thee as a shadow in the terror of death,

From waving harsh arms

I will raise thee up,

In life I will feed thee with rod and staff.


MARTA:


With all our being

We must weep, our tears flash,

We saw our brother's body,

Our brother's body sink,

There eats the worm, the brother will stink already.


JESUS:


O Eternal of Life,

O creative majesty, O source!

I pray not in vain:

Pour forth thy grace 

And awake Lazarus from Hades' hell!


Who gave me power,

To raise my brother from the dead

Up to me in life,

He also commanded me

To descend into the realm of the dead.


I stand in the kingdom of shadows

As divinity and as man in one being

And awaken thee, O corpse,

Unbind thee from evil.

I am approached by God to redeem thee.


MAGDALENE:


I trust not my senses,

But Lazarus is returned to us,

There sinks the funeral bark,

The rock tombs tremble,

I see a glimmer float around him.


I see him smile softly

And humbly and gently I see him looking and still,

Wise in the wisdom of God

In a beautifully transfigured shell.

The new life is the Eternal‘s will.


LAZARUS:


Praised, highly praised

Be the hope of Moses and Elijah!

In heavenly paradises

Is Marta's and Mary's

Beloved friend ,the holy Messiah!


I was in the kingdom of the dead,

There Satan would feed my soul.

But God commanded 

To separate me from death,

To bring the light of life to the Gentiles.


JESUS:


Is now, O Magdalene,

O Magdalene's sister, is your suffering

Satisfied and your tears?

He who is ready to suffer

With me, his sufferings become bliss!


Life is a suffering,

Suffering is given to you for bliss.

I will feed you in suffering,

You shall soar in bliss,

Shall live, O my darling, live forever!



VII


JESUS:


I walk in the world's bustle,

To rest with you, you doves in the nests,

Who love you dearly

With an ever steadfast

Affection of choice, my dear sisters.


MARTA:


And wilt thou drink water

And art thou thirsty from the dusty ways?

The cup shall flash to thee,

Your thirst shall be quenched

By my motherly love's blessing.


I have good bread,

Baked brown in the fire of my hearth.

For thee, O God's messenger,

I bend my neck,

Relieving thee of thy burdens.


JESUS:


I have good tidings,

To you I bring from God's morning star.

You shall hear from my mouth

The knowledge from far away

And learn God's wisdom with your hearts.


MAGDALENE:


I will gladly listen to you

And to thy wisdom, thy joy's tidings,

Will trade my folly

In this twilight hour

With thy wisdom, the word from thy mouth.


I will lie down before thy shoes,

I will lie down as a lamb with his shepherd.

We will lie down

In thy wisdom myrtles.

But how, Master, shall I feed thee?


I have no works

And no merit to show thee.

I am like God's mountains

All inaction, and silence

And idleness before the word is mine.


I wait in silence

And solitude for spiritual inspiration,

I seek God's will

In my meditation

And want to immerse myself and contemplate.


I count myself among the weary

And will but fall into God's caution,

In idle peace,

In deep inner halls

To the innermost chamber of the bridehood.


JESUS:


I will show thee the way

And teach you to worship with your heart

In hope and in silence.

Jehowah's breaths blew,

When Eve was silent in the Garden of Eden


In the blue twilight hour

I saw Eve waiting for Jehovah's coming,

A word from God's mouth

To hear with the tender

Ready heart in the inner garden.


MARTA:


The hour of supper

Calls us to a sweet feast.

Give some to the dog, too!

Like white wine the pale moonlight

Shines on our poor hall.


When your wisdom sayings

Comfort and strengthen the working lads,

Then send them to the kitchen

To diligence and good works,

Then I will remember your wisdom too.


JESUS:


She shall as much as possible

Away from the world remain in prayer.

I love you unspeakably,

But better is the constant

That it may do true good.


He who turns to the source

And unites with God in praise and honour,

Whose good work never ends,

He found true diligence.

And the Father nourishes all like the titmouse.


The pious seize this,

Then she reaches for a good part;

That shall not be taken from her,

Who first to salvation

Turned. And thou, haste not after the vain.


MAGDALENE:


I will listen to wisdom

And dig in wisdom's rocky pits,

In my cloak's little bulge

Hide his sayings.

O Marta, look, I step into the kitchen.


I'll leave the good part,

That thou may'st hearken to the true sage,

Wisdom itself, for thy salvation,

He will show thee the way,

I will praise him even in the kitchen.



VIII


JESUS:


Why do you weep, you women,

Since I will suffer for you on the cross!

You may trust in God.

And if I depart from you,

I will come again to shepherd you.


MAGDALENE:


God hear my lamentation,

I burn with pain like a black flame!

I see them pounding nails

And him on the trunk of the cross,

The silent sufferer, like the sacrificial lamb.


How the nails hurt him,

The hand-washing of his tormentors,

The thorns on his heart,

The iniquity blithe,

But God lifts up the cross to the ladder of heaven!


I see the wounds bleed

And hear him cry out in anguished pain

And hear the word of goodness

Forgive the tormentors.

O may the Lord woo me on the cross!


I see wisdom suffer

In his flesh, with his heart of God

Inflicting pain on himself

With blasphemous tongues

And to me one, to me in my pain.


In surrendered supplication

I surrender to the pierced feet,

To see in the wounded mark

Of the spicy and sweet

Saviour. For his love I will atone.


I will weep and nestle

In his wounds under his gaze,

To submit myself in the cleft,

To see God's back,

For his sake send me into pain.


JESUS:


O child of God, from the cross

I entrust thee to Mary's mother's heart!

Orion, Pleiads,

The seven stars' candles,

They crown her flaming in her sorrows.


MAGDALENE:


The ointments of tears shall

Wash thy feet and anoint thee.

Behold I to the gracious one,

I will trust her in all things

Like John in the habit.


MARY:


Thou seest the Master die,

Death you see robbing life of life,

The holy one corrupt,

You weep like the doves,

Come into my nest, I will believe for you.


JESUS:


O Father, my soul

Passing away I give into thy love!

With my cross I steal

Like a thief

Mary's soul, that it may abide with me.


From the wound of my heart

I bear the beloved, and I pine

For my life's hour,

Where what I have done

I treasure in the Holy Mary.


MAGDALENE:


He breathed his soul

In God's breath sublimely noble

And over my fault

He bowed his head,

Forgave on the cross his sinful maiden.


I will caress the corpse,

To die with him I love more than life.

He lies in all roses.

Mary's breasts quiver,

She wants to give life to the dead God.


O Mother of Jesus, please,

In thy womb's grave keep the body,

In the midst of thy heart,

In thy bosom's pair,

And weave it in the veil of thy hair.


I will but weep, weep,

Since I have lost all hope of happiness.

I lie on the stones

As if born to death.

I never remain unscathed by gloom.


IX


POET:


Thou, in the fruitful green,

In the life-rich, flowery garden,

In the twilight's glow

I see thee in a soft dress 

Standing alone, waiting for thy comfort.


MAGDALENE:


I have precious oils,

Balms, myrrh, aloes and nard,

And tears of my soul,

On flowers of all kinds

The morning dew, all awaiting light.


Where is the dawn,

Where are the morning star's diamonds?

The wind of the morning blew,

The trees stood rustling,

The first larks sang in the land.


And all is promise,

But only my soul is in mourning.

How do I learn joyful praise

Before the grave's rocky wall,

How happiness of spirit under a shower of tears?


Where is the much beloved,

The son of the Madonna who praises God,

The consolation for the afflicted,

Life's beautiful sun,

The witness to the message of true delight?


How I ardently long,

At least his body with my grief

And my sorrow's tear

And my tears' shower

To anoint behind his grave wall!


But where is he to be found?

O how I long for him, desire him,

To join Jesus

And in the dark sea

Of death to follow him into the void....


JESUS:


O Mary, O Mary!

Do not seek the living one in death!

In the chariot of Elijah

Your God's messenger came

In flaming fire to thee, thou rose-red.


I want from you, rose,

By and by pluck out all thy thorns

By the glow of my fire

And with the sun's gaze

Enrapture the chalice of the rose in the embers!


With my embers 

I will purify the bride‘s loving soul!

I praise the failure of death,

I praise the glow of the embers,

In which you glow, whom I choose to live.


MAGDALENE:


I will love thee, love thee,

Though I do not understand your ways.

Where is death

Since I see thee alive?

And dost thou this day, Jesus, choose me to wed thee?


JESUS:


I call to the wedding feast

All of you, love, who will follow you,

You first and you best

Of the penitents on earth,

I send you to the shepherds and the flocks.


No, do not fall at my feet,

Do not passionately clasp my limbs!

Thirty years shall you do penance

And pray for the brethren,

Then we'll meet again at the wedding feast.


I must prepare thee

For marriage with the Lord through many tears

And loneliness and suffering

And unquenchable longing.

I want all of you to become maidens...


I sent you to the messengers,

The apostle of the early church, go

And tell the exiles

That I see them all

And lead them home and into God's marriage!



X


POET:


O dear Simon Peter,

O father and husband of the Church, say,

If you later send the fair one away

On a dark day

From the circle? So says the legend.


PETER:


That is the lie of the Gnosis!

The Church's tradition confirms it,

That I yield to Jesus,

Pride's been stripped from me.

Mary Magdalene's absence harms


Ecclesia as a whole,

I who keep her, who saw Mary

Dancing with love's delight,

She trusted to Maximin,

Who kives celibate in God's love.


MAGDALENE:


With Maximin to ships

And Lazarus and Martha on the sea,

We rounded the reefs,

Pursued by the fierce host

Of Satan's angels, hate's spear and javelins.


To be a blood witness of Jesus

Was my desire, as Stephen became,

To baptise all the earth

With sacrificial blood in the order

Of the love of Jesus, I went to the north.


I wanted to teach all the Gentiles

The blessed Messiah,

In the sign of his suffering

To convert the heathen world,

Who are slaves to idols and covetousness.


I wanted to enlighten them

In the light of the Spirit as the flame of love,

To moisten them with the water of Jesus

Which flowed from the stem of the cross,

And gather all the sheep to the lamb,


The lamb and the lion,

To the Lord who shall open the seventh seal.

Flown round by the seagulls

And other birds of the sea

We consecrated the sails to the wind of the Holy Spirit.


The floods called floods

And Goddess the Cypriots called me

In fervent glories,

Those dead in sin,

And yet threw stones at God's messengers.


But Jesus on the sea 

Walked on in the ship of the sea church.

With my eye almond

I looked upon my enemies

And saw the image of my only friend.


O Jesus! all the floods

And the raging of all passions

Only the embers burn

And let the blossoms bloom

Of lust for thee! O come to command me!


Come down from heaven

And meet my ardour of love

And work wonders through me

And let the storm subside

And bestow thy love's flaming blessing!


Then with tongues of fire

To glorify thee and to glorify thee

The angels' praise sung

From every blue flower

And every poet's heart's shrine....


POET:


O heavenly and beautiful one,

Do I hear you praying for my poetry?

Mary Magdalene,

How thy locks did blow!

Lead me with the tip of thy hair to Eden!




XI


POET:


Herald of the Franks,

Thou didst teach them by miracles and by words,

To give thanks to the Eternal.

Alone in your place

You came praying to the narrow gate.


Mary Magdalene,

Let me hear the praise of your angels,

Most beautiful of Siena -

Thou knowest how to beguile me,

To praise God with seraphic choirs!


MAGDALENE:


Wasteland, your centre

I have reached with my poor soul

In fervent supplication.

For me the mystic cave

Is heavenly Jerusalem's jewel.


The scent of rose oil

And a torture witness's skull bones

Here near in my cave,

To subdue me to God,

I pray to knock at heaven's gate.


O Bridegroom of the soul,

Destroy all that separates me from Thee!

Enter my cave

Of the inner visions,

Where daily my praises to thee I seal.


With every beat of my heart

I unite myself to thy sweet name,

God of all pain,

Sink thy word's seed

Into the bottom of my soul - by Our Lady!


Ignite embers and blaze

And purify me all in thy fire!

That which is holy and high

Be ever dear to me

In you, my bridegroom, dear faithful one!


The tenderness of love

Of the Eternal I will know in death,

I want to mate mind and heart

To the heart of Jesus -

Thou, Jesus, dost love to rest in my hair!


I want to kiss you, to kiss you!

Draw me into the wine vault of your love

To heavenly delights

And everlasting gain,

I am but in thy divine flesh!


ANGEL:


Thanksgiving, praise, glory

To the Creator and the Word and the Flame!

Angel choirs serve thee.

You make yourself beautiful to the lamb

And comb your hair with the comb of prayer.


Fasting with bread and water

We saw thee thirty years full of trust,

Pursuing holiness,

Most beautiful of women,

So today you may behold the body of the Master.


MAGDALENE:


I see myself in the cathedral,

Where the angels sing in the liturgy,

Like a stream of grace

I see the multitude swinging

And a priest bring Jesus' host.


O Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

How white your flesh, how sweet and how humble,

O Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

The love of us both

Transfigures happily to me my death-suffering!


O Lord in my heart,

I dance blissfully into thy heart,

So sweet from love's pain,

You sing to me across,

Beloved bride! - I love thee, dear one!


All my life's penance

Now in marriage with the light of lights

Use - God's salute -

By thy grace, O Judge,

To sinful lovers ,sinful poets!


POET:


In thy footsteps, fair one,

I will walk to thy shepherd's tent.

There may I, Magdalene,

In the grove of love's myrtles,

Thy bridegroom with bread and wine entertain.


To thee will I eternally give thanks

And will trust in thy prayer to God.

We who are sick of sin

We need holy women

Who see our salvation in the heart of Jesus.





PART THREE



1


Mary Magdalene has

Accompanied the Messiah faithfully,

So did Joanna and Susan,

She followed him with all the other women

Of Galilee, who followed him,

When Jesus Christ went to the cross.

She was also with Saint Mary,

The mother of Jesus, Our Lady,

And with the other pious women

With Jesus Christ under the cross.


After Christ's crucifixion and death

He first appeared to her

In the Easter garden Sunday morning,

In the resurrection paradise,

Her, and Mary Salome.

She was also with Saint Mary

And with the apostles of our Lord

And with the brothers of our Lord

And with the disciples too

In the earthly Jerusalem

After Jesus' Ascension,

Praying for God's spirit,

Who also descended upon them

In tongues of fire on their heads.


The myth of the Ecclesia

Mary Magdalene melted

Together with Mary 

Of Bethany, Martha's sister, and

The nameless sinner

And she who anointed the Lord.

And the apostle queen,

Apostle of France,

La Madelaine de la France,

A penitent sinner,

A harlot and a penitent.

The myth of the Ecclesia

Mary Magdalene melted

Together with Mary 

Of Egypt, that whore who became

An ascetic in the desert.


In the circle of disciples from the beginning

Mary Magdalene was,

She, without husband, without son,

Was called Miriam of Magdala.


Joanna and Susan and

Mary Magdalene also,

They were healed by the Lord,

Freed from the demon's curse,

They served him with their goods,

While he went from village to village

And proclaimed the kingdom of heaven.


Mary Magdalene was

Freed from the demon's curse,

The seven evil spirits fled

Before the finger of God through the Lord.

She was very rich in goods and chattels,

Was mistress, independent, free,

Who went with the Wonder Rabbi.


The eye-witness of our Lord,

The ear-witness of our Lord,

She followed him as a disciple

In Galilee through the land

And was the Master's handmaid.


The witness of his death saw

Him laid in the grave.


She was the first of all women,

The forsaken disciple.

Susan and Joanna and

The other Mary and

Mary Salome and all

The other wives of our Lord -

Mary Magdalene was

Messiah's chosen bride.


The apostles all fled,

When Jesus Christ hung on the cross,

Only Saint Mary, Our Lady,

And Saint Mary's sister and

Mary Magdalene

Remained with the Lord on the cross.


Mary Magdalene was

Full of courage followed to the cross,

Full of courage and solidarity

She stood with Jesus under the cross.

For her love was so strong,

Was stronger than the fear of death.

She gave herself completely to the Saviour,

The Saviour and the Kingdom of Heaven.


When Jesus was obedient to God

To the point of death on the cross,

Mary Magdalene was

Faithful to the Master even unto death.



2


Is then to the risen Lord

Mary of Magdala alone

Met in the Sunday morning,

Speak, or Magdalene as

The queen of the dear women?


They are courageous, loving!

But through the death of the cross

The faith of women is deeply shaken.


The angel in the white dress

Tells Magdalene and the women,

You seek the Christ in death,

But he is risen, alive,

Now he goes before you pointing.


Saint Magdalene and the women

Were the first witnesses of the Lord

Who saw the Christ as an apparition.


Full of courage, full of great joy,

They hasten to the circle of disciples,

Praising the resurrection.


Saint Magdalene and the women

Confess Christ on the cross

As their Master, their Lord.


Saint Magdalene faithfully witnesses

Messiah Jesus' empty tomb,

Him who goes up to the Lord,

To his God and her God.


Saint Magdalene now gathers

The widely scattered flock

And founds the Ecclesia.


The women of Galilee around

Saint Magdalene devoutly believed

The resurrection of our Lord

And built the Ecclesia.


The First Magdalene was

The Lady of Galilee as

Saint Peter was an apostle prince

In the apostles' circle of disciples,

But they did not quarrel,

They loved each other in the Lord God.


Apostle of the apostles is

Saint Magdalene, sent forth

By our risen Lord.


Prophets spoke seer word

In the wise spirit of the I-am

To God's chosen people.

Mary Magdalene spoke

In Jesus Christ, the I-am,

To Peter, to the apostles.


Mary Magdalene called

With Jesus' disciples and

Mary, Our Lady,

And Jesus' brothers, sisters also,

And the apostles of our Lord

Down from God the Spirit of the Lord!



3


The disciples of our Lord

And disciples wrestled in the Spirit,

For Jesus Magdalene

Preferably kissed on the mouth.


She asked him many questions,

Of fifty questions to the Lord

Mary asked him forty,

He answered her every time.


Then Saint Peter once demanded,

Mary Magdalene should

Leave the apostles' group,

But Jesus rebuked Peter,

Go away from me, you Satan!

Do not grieve my lady,

I want her to stay with me!


She was the disciple of the Lord.

In the Gospel of Peter

She is the woman who on Sunday morning,

On Easter morning came to the tomb,

The devout women's guide.


The beautiful disciple of the Lord

And her friends in God,

They loved Jesus very much

And wept at his death

And brought gifts to the tomb.


For the disappointed hope only

The apostles' circle lamented,

But Magdalene and the women

Lamented for the bridegroom!


Mary Magdalene was

The first of women who

Went with ointments to the tomb,

And there saw Christ risen

And heard their Master's word,

One goeth now from you

To the holy apostles' circle,

Say, The Lord is risen!


Saint Magdalene and the women

Immediately trusted in their Lord

And doubted not Christ

And his resurrection from death.


But the brothers doubted:

He that is dead, will he rise again?

But Christ helped the women,

To preach to the brethren.

The Lord appeared to the brothers himself,

The brethren still doubted.

Only when they the wounds touched

And heard Jesus preach,

They found the faith of Easter.



4


Saint Miriam of Magdala

Is witness to the empty tomb of God,

Receiving the angel's greeting,

Seer of the resurrection.


She stands out among all women,

Preferred by the bridegroom.


What is the precedence of this woman

And Magdalene's friends

Before Peter's male friendship and

The other apostles' power?

It is the free choice of grace

And election of our Lord!


The holy beloved, woman,

Chosen above all women,

Is of special worthiness,

Which is beyond the sight of man.


Woman Eve listened to the serpent's word

And was punished with woe and pain

And became the handmaid of sorrow,

The source of Adam's sorrow.

Mary listened to Christ's word

And was sent forth by him

To be the messenger of joy to all the world,

The source of our happiness!


Because Eve, the first woman,

The first sin's curse,

Therefore Messiah now loves women

More than all the sons of men

And among all women most

Saint Miriam of Magdala.


Be New Eve every woman,

Beloved of Christ every woman

And greet the Risen One

And bring joy to the world!


Mary Magdalene, ah,

Weeping for her Lord and God

In great need of consolation,

Therefore the Lord himself appeared to her.


But not only the empty tomb

And not the linen bandages alone

And not only the angel's greeting

And not only the vision of the Lord,

They do not ground her faith,

But that the risen Lord

Calls Saint Miriam by name:

Mary! was his first word

As the resurrector from death!


She only has to understand that

She cannot be her master's

Beloved of her Lord

As before at the Master's crucifixion,

Rather, that he goes to the Father,

To his God, to her God.


The Lord promises the Spirit of Consolation,

Mary comforts his multitude.


The Ruach is the Comforter,

The deaconess Miriam

Is comforter through Ruach‘s comfort.


The angels announce Miriam

The new gospel

Of the resurrection from death.

Miriam is the choir leader

Of the choir of God-loving women.

Saint Magdalene and the women

Now proclaim the Lord's triumph,

The good shepherd in his grace.


This is the new hierarchy

Of the resurrection from death:

The angel of the church greets

The prophetess Miriam,

And Miriam prophetically speaks

To Peter as the rock of the church.


The risen Christ greets

Mary Magdalene and

The other Marys all:

Now rejoice, beloved!

Behold, through you shall rejoice

The women of all the world!


Where a beautiful woman once

The great sadness planted,

Now the new beautiful woman

Will plant our bliss.


The brothers have all fled,

When Jesus Christ hung on the cross,

The sisters stayed with the Lord.

The brothers sought in flight

Their own salvation in this world,

The sisters stayed in suffering

Their Saviour's compassion.


Even today the people of men live

For their own advantage and gain.

But the crowd of women is

Despite sadness and anguish of soul

Open to faith and the spirit.


So rejoice! Christ has risen!

Rejoice! Death is now conquered!

So rejoice, dear women all,

Rejoice, Jesus loves women!



5


Eve the serpent has listened,

So the wise word of the Lord

Cast out the seven evil spirits

Out of Miriam of Magdala.


Virgin was Saint Miriam,

Who set out as an apostle

To the sanctuary of Ephesus,

There she lived with John,

After the Blessed Mother 

Had gone to the Lord God.

Mary Magdalene suffered

Then in the great Ephesus

And died there in martyrdom.


As on the rock Peter hears 

The community of the apostles,

Mary, Lady Apostle,

Is leader of the pious women.


The Lord gave Saint Miriam

In the circle of women the primacy.


Mary Magdalene is

The bishop of the pious women.

Mary, Mother of Jesus, is

The Pontiff of the Ecclesia.


Mary Magdalene was

Full of strong love, 

Her soul was full of feeling,

Purified by serenity,

Her passionate feeling

And her love became so

The reason of the harrowing at the grave,

Of the Lord's gracious vision,

The joyful message to the world,

Her womanly apostleship.


Man who studies religion,

Like Magdalene, be diligent,

Be diligent as the Master's bride,

Then you will be in the Lord

A teacher of Sophia.


Saint Magdalene and the women,

Apostles they were,

Sent to the apostles,

Evangelists of the Lord,

Sent to the preachers of Jesus,

And Christ-bearers they were,

Who carried Christ into the world.


For the ancestress Eve

Taught man, her husband,

The serpent's wisdom full of deceit.

Therefore Miriam of Magdala

As mother of the Ecclesia

Teaches Peter, the rock of the Church,

That Christ-Sophia rose from the dead.


Also Thekla of Iconium

With Paul's pleasure was

Evangelist, teacher

And missionary to the world.


The twelve apostles of our Lord

Are among all the saints

What Miriam of Magdala

Is among all pious women.


She fought with the apostles,

She surpassed the pious women,

Is the ideal of all Christians.


Mary Magdalene was

Teacher of the twelve apostles.

For if the Lord did not rise from the dead,

All faith is without meaning.

The risen Christ is

Appeared first to Miriam,

That the resurrection she

May proclaim as an apostle

To the apostolic council.



6


The pious women sent her,

They sent Magdalene,

They said, Let us be wise

And act wisely and justly,

Mary Magdalene shall

See the tomb of God,

And what she shall tell us then,

That we will do faithfully.


The Lord will rise again, yes,

As he promised us,

But how will he rise?


Mary saw the empty tomb,

The Lord came to her as a gardener,

Who shall go to his God.


Mary Magdalene said,

All ye disciples of Jesus,

Learn what I saw at the tomb,

Do not hide what you do not understand.

From the sepulchre the stone is moved away.

Was our Lord carried away?

I saw no guards,

Soldiers have all fled.

Christ is raised up by God,

The Lord who gives the fallen

The resurrection of the dead!


And Peter and John have

Rushed to the tomb in a race,

They were sad and despondent

Because the Lord did not appear to them.


Mary Magdalene became

Mother of the apostles and

The comforter of the disciples.


You who are initiated by our Lord,

You, fiery lovers of Jesus,

Do not lose hope, take courage.

What is happening is working for salvation.

The woman, the first to fall,

Is first to behold the Master in

The resurrection from death.

To all of us he speaks kindly,

Now rejoice, woman and man and child,

Now rejoice, you fallen ones,

You shall all rise again!


Mary wept by the grave,

As if the Lord were gone.

The Lord appeared to her as a gardener,

The Christ, the risen:

O Miriam, O Miriam!

Proclaim with your tongue, woman,

Declare to the sons of my kingdom

Who wait for my resurrection,

That I am the Resurrection.

Now make haste, Mary, dear woman,

Gather my disciples all.

I will use you, woman,

As the horn of my resurrection.

Now bring my peace

To the fearful ears of my flock,

Who hide themselves in the house.

You wake them all from sleep,

I will meet them in the light.

Say, The Lord is risen

And stayed no longer in the grave.

Apostles now, drive out death,

For risen is the Lord

Who is to all the fallen

Resurrection of all men.


The pious women then said,

Chosen darling of the Lord,

Mary Magdalene, yes,

The word of thy mouth is true

And wise is thy message.


Saint Magdalene and the women,

They spoke to the band of disciples,

Of the fainthearted apostles,

You, why do you lose all courage?

Why are you so hopeless?

Cover not your faces,

Lift up your hearts to the Lord,

For the Lord is risen.

Now join in the dance of the round

And sing beautifully with Magdalene,

That Jesus lives, that Jesus lives!



7


Saint Miriam of Magdala

Who instructed the children of the soul

And baptised them for the new birth,


Hail, messenger of our salvation,

Hail, bringer of joy to the world!





PART FOUR



The three Marys floated on the sea,

Mary Joses, virgin pure as snow,

How voluptuous beautiful Mary Magdalene

(I saw the goddess in the cathedral of Siena),

And wise as wisdom's original idea

In the womb of Mary Salome,

Three graces and nymphs, beautiful as dreams,

In a ship through the foam of the sea

Of the Mediterranean, so they came,

To land at Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer

To land on the Gulf of the Lion there,

The nymphs of God landed in the port.

Mary Magdalene, bride full of sex-appeal,

The nymph of the Messiah, went to Aix

In Provence, the chivalrous Provence,

To offer sacred to God La France.

She was also in Marseilles, in that place,

Standing radiant there in the Triumphant Gate,

Was also in Avignon, where in exile

The popes, where Petrarch full of feeling

At the cathedral of Santa Clare saw the aura

Of the divine beauty of his goddess Laura.

But the Gauls and the savage Celts

To the many gods in the superworlds

Sacrifice even human beings, sacrifice human blood!

There chose as their highest good

The princess of Provence, so beautiful,

With her prince a god of gold,

The god of fortune with the earthly laws

Of wealth they chose for their golden idol

And made their idol manifest,

To the golden god of fortune, child sacrifices!

Mary Magdalene cried out, An abomination

Is your idol, shame and abomination,

I look upon the golden god of fortune with horror,

I curse your vile idol!

But prince and princess full of the power of wealth

They feasted on the splendour of their idol

And worshipped the idol of gold

And hearkened not to Magdalene's sweetness.

But Mary Joses, pure as snow,

And wise Mary Salome

Lived in abject poverty, as they never did,

Of the holy genius alone

Of the brides of Jesus. Every poor fool

Of God's love chose herself as mistress

Lady Poverty, like the pious troubadours,

Who as Franciscan Jesus their sura

Of God's love sang, God's charity sang.

But Mary Magdalene was too

Of the poverty of her sisters

And saw how prince and princess wickedly blaspheme

The saints, because they are so bitterly poor.

Mary Magdalene cried out, Have pity 

On Christ, on your poor sisters

And let the rich heathen blaspheme no more.

Mary Magdalene beautiful as foam

Appeared to the princess at night in a dream,

Mary Magdalene stood full of fury

Before that princess of Provence, and badly

The princess felt Magdalene's wrath:

The three Marys are born of God,

They are God's nymphs, Jesus Christ's sisters,

But you rich pagans want to blaspheme them?

Alms rather give to God's nymphs,

Or one day the Lord God will turn up his nose

And despise you at the Last Day.

Alms never denied to Christ's brides,

Magdalene said to the princess sternly.

But the rich princess' heart was tight,

She spoke to her prince in the night:

Mary Magdalene, full of power,

Appeared before me, full of God's wrath and fury,

And said, On the last day thou shalt fare ill,

If thou wilt not help the Master's sisters.

Then said the prince, I will cease from blasphemy,

I saw Mary Magdalene naked,

I saw her in the fierceness of God,

Like a Goddess, fairest of all strumpets,

But woe is me, I saw her angry with me!

I fall down at her feet

And turn to the Lord God in repentance.

Beautiful is Mary Magdalene naked

And God's power and majesty are great,

We shall never rest with our souls,

Unless we make sacrifice, unless we repent.

Mary Magdalene, greetings to God,

Receive graciously the penance of rich sinners.

Then said the Prince and Princess of Provence,

Marie, la Madelaine de la France,

Beautiful as the foam of the sea and wild as the wind,

Ask the Lord God for a child,

That the Lord God may accept our greeting

And our penance, God open the womb

Of the mother, God of fertility,

Consecrated to Mary Magdalene.

Entreat us praying like the spirit in the wind

From God fertility, to the woman a child!

Mary Magdalene said, Oh no,

Not yours shall be the child of Jesus,

If God gives you a child as the fruit of repentance,

It shall rest at my feet forever

And be a saint of love

And be a troubadour of unity!

The princess said, If the fruit of the womb 

Is not granted to me but by God's discipline,

I will keep the fruit of my womb in my bosom.

Consecrate Mary Magdalene eternally

The fruit of my sinful generation,

Mary's servant and God's servant!

But Mary Magdalene asked

And God the Creator did the deed of mercy,

The child landed at the bay,

The soul became the fruit of the womb,

Blessed at conception

To Mary Magdalene was consecrated.

Then said the prince, Teach the truth of faith,

That I may honour thy deity.

Mary Magdalene by the river

Ardeche said, Thou goest on pilgrimage to Rome,

That thou mayest enjoy the wisdom of Peter,

The dogmas of Christ the pope teacheth thee there,

The cornerstone of the Vatican's edifice,

Take with thee on thy pilgrimage thy wife,

The princess, pregnant by God's grace,

That she, blessed in wisdom's field.

Be to thee a grove of roses full of aroma,

When Pope Peter blesses her in Rome.

Then said the Prince and Princess of Provence,

Marie, la Madelaine de la France,

Give us your blessing on our pilgrimage,

The Cross, where the Divinity is revealed,

That we may be blessed and consecrated

By your divinity of the Trinity.

Mary Magdalene without equal

Consecrated them both with the sign of the cross.

Then prince and princess got into a boat

And sailed through the dawn and the sunset

Through the stream of the Tyrrhenian Sea

On their pilgrimage to the Pope of Rome.

Then a storm arose on the sea,

The waves bent like valley and tower,

Sprays of spray in the tempest,

With thunder great breakers raged,

And beneath the thundering sea

The princess of Provence gave birth to her child.

And as she cried out in the last contractions,

The child was born, she died!

The child lived, was a little boy.

That the newborn had murdered

The mother far from every safe port

In the wild sea with wild matricide,

The father could not forgive him.

To consecrate the womb to certain death,

As much as the child cried and whimpered,

He laid it on a rocky island

In the sea, and his mother's body too.

Then a gentle breeze blew across the sea,

When all the storms in the beds of the sea

And the waves gently smoothed themselves,

The skippers rowed in the silent stream

The sailors rowed the prince in the quiet current 

Of the sea to the pope in Rome.

When Peter saw the Prince of Provence,

He said, By Madelaine de la France,

Mary Magdalene without equal,

I see thee a sinner under the sign of the cross

Consecrated to the saints, and yet I find

In thy cold soul grievous sin,

Your soul must be cleansed by the flood

Of God's grace in Messiah's blood,

Repent, repent, be ashamed of your sins!

And Peter showed him Jerusalem,

The house of the Mother of God in Nazareth,

The tabernacle of the Annunciation still stands,

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,

Where Orthodox monks pleasantly

Pray with Africans and with Romans

And meet with Armenians,

And showed him Simon Peter's fisherman's house,

There went in and out the Christ Jesus,

The Christ Jesus who redeemed Eve,

Who dwelt there with Simon or Kefa,

Who also showed him the place 

Of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,

A Mohammedan godly there

In the land of the Jews after the dark night

Was to unlock the church with key power,

For in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre dwell praying

All Christian denominations quarreled,

So the Prince of Israel sublimely gave

The key power of the church to the Muslim.

There the prince prayed for his sin,

For God's mercy on his wife and child,

Blessing the dead and the abandoned

He implored on Christ's pilgrimage ways,

That Christ may reveal God's grace.

The prince and Peter went on pilgrimage for three years

Through Israel, where they honoured the Christ

And then returned to their homeland.

Pope Peter returned to the Vatican,

The prince set out on the sea plan

And sailed through the sea. At the whine 

Of the seals he came to the rocky island,

Where he left the princess‘ body at last

And where he exposed his offspring.

A miracle by the grace of the Lord happened,

The prince saw the miracles of God:

Mary Magdalene sat on the hem

Of the island, gently lapped by the foam of the sea

Her slender bare feet on the beach,

As shells drifted by the sea to the island's shore,

There she sat in the light, airy dress,

Her naked breasts a feast for the eyes,

Her almond eyes, full of love

To the child who suckled at her large bosom.

The milk of comfort was allowed with pleasure,

Three years old lying at the breast, the plump,

Mary Magdalene's plump breast,

The boy laughed with love's delight,

Mary's naked bosom to his mouth,

The dear boy laughing and healthy,

Satisfied by Mary's passion

In paradise played full of strength,

For blooming around the foot of spotless

Mary Magdalene bloomed roses

And lilies, violets, carnations, poppies and lotuses,

As in the flowers the south wind blew,

Mary Magdalene heavenly sweet,

The infant on her lap in paradise,

Intoxicated by the murmur of the sea wind

Sitting divinely there, astonishing the prince,

Who lowered his brow to the sand

And prayed, The beautiful love's wonder

And pure mirror thou, O Gratia Plena,

O divine Mary Magdalene!

Then Magdalene laughed sweetly and gaily,

The Prince of Provence so sweetly confounded,

To the Church of the Holy Sepulchre you went down,

Therefore, by God's grace, I'll work a miracle,

For Christ thy penitence thou hast offered,

And raise thy princess from the dead!

Talita kum! said Magdalene softly,

Mary Magdalene, Gratia Plena,

Mary Magdalene hath commanded

With Christ's word, when from the dead

The princess awoke, the princess of Provence:

To Mary, la Madelaine de la France,

In the dust the sinner, the fool, gives thanks,

Thine is my child, O goddess-like mistress,

To Mary Magdalene be consecrated

My child, to the Godhead in Trinity,

My child, in God's beautiful love,

In Provence a troubadour of love

And pious troubadour of the Godhead!

Said Magdalene, He who from your egg

Hatched, the womb's fruit with love buy,

From death I baptise him in Christ!

Here at Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer

Mary baptises him on the name of Pierre.

Mary said to Pierre, By Jesus Christ,

A child of the Lady you have become,

Marie, la Madelaine de la France!

When the prince and princess return to Provence

In beautiful Aix they shall find

Mary Magdalene, bride full of sex-appeal,

Full of God's love, fairest of women,

They build her a temple in France.

But you, my son, shall go with Mary

To the Basque country at the foot of the Pyrenees,

There in the mountains you shall become a shepherd,

Because as a shepherd you will feed the flocks,

You shall be a praying shepherd, feeding God's sheep,

Stand before the Godhead in the sky - Jahvé!




PART FIVE



CANTO I


O Muse, Queen of Heaven,

In this merry month of May

I will sing Magdalene,

So help my song!


When Jesus Nazarene was

The Pharisee Simon's guest,

The Pharisee did not give him

The brotherly kiss on his forehead.


When Jesus entered the hut

Of Simon the Pharisee, was

The wanderer's foot stained with dust,

How weary was the wanderer's foot!


But Simon did not give him anointing oil,

Nor washed the dust-stained foot.

Because Simon was without love,

He did not love the wayfarer.


The Pharisees of that time,

They were quite self-righteous,

Because the laws of Moses

And their own law they preserved.


The Pharisees thought proudly:

We pray and we fast much,

Alms we give enough,

We fear God and the Torah!


But the sinners of this world,

Who collect the bounty tax,

Are a race cursed of God,

Thank God I am not like them!


But the sinners of this world,

They commit fornication before God,

In fornication and in adultery

The sinners profane God.


God does not love sinners,

God's wrath is upon them!

But I, the Pharisee, am

A chosen servant of the Lord!


What does Jesus Nazarenus

Tell me this night?

I am ready to argue,

I am well versed in the Scriptures.


But then the harlot entered,

Truly, she was a beautiful woman!

The public sinner

Openly came to the Son of Man.


The long red curls

Fell on her white shoulders,

Her breasts stood out

Pointed through the silken dress.


The public whore had been

Many a man's bride

And had often spread the pair

Of thighs for some man.


Now she came to the Son of Man

And wept tears of remorse hot:

Alas, dead bitch am I!

I am nothing but a louse!


But you are the Messiah,

Who restores my dignity!

Accept my tears of remorse,

They fall on your foot.


I wash your feet

With my tears of repentance clear,

I dry your feet

With my red curly hair.


I kiss your feet,

The sinner's made-up mouth

Caress thy wandering foot

As a sign of my repentance.


And Jesus lifted up the harlot

And said to the beautiful woman,

Mary Magdalene, you,

I have chosen thee to be my bride.


The Pharisee thought:

If Jesus were a prophet,

He would know that this beautiful woman

Is a public sinner.


The Son of Man said to Simon,

Thou gavest me no brotherly kiss,

Thou didst not anoint my feet,

As this fair whore did.


She has shown me too much love,

The great love of her penance.

Because much I have forgiven her,

Her love is also very great.



CANTO II


Mary Magdalene was

Possessed by the seven

Of the infernal demons that

Darkened her soul.


She saw in the kingdom of her soul

And saw within the soul

Demons of female form,

The sevenfold she-devil.


The name of this demon was

Ghostly, Lilith was the spirit's name,

For Lilith is a night wraith,

The demon from the underworld.


What then is demon Lilith's work?

She casts off the wombs,

The raven mother's evil fury

Is the ghost Lilith's work.


She also advances fornication,

So that the woman lives together

With a man who is not her husband,

She who has already possessed many men.


Like Oholiba she too

Spread her thighs to every man

And under every green tree

She has fornicated with Baal.


O soul of Magdalene, you

Must turn to the Lord,

The Lord cast out the demon from you,

To whom thou hast submitted thyself.


With the finger of God the Lord casts out

The demon Lilith out of thee

And cleanse the house of thy soul

And adorns the castle of thy soul.


But the Lilith devil

And her seven Lilim

Roam the barren wasteland

And walk by the Red Sea


And return to find thee

Cleaned and adorned and come

And want to return to your house

With a legion of Lilim.


But Magdalene said unto the Lord,

Blessed be the womb and the breast,

The womb that bore thee,

The breasts which thou hast sucked!


Messiah cleansed the house

Of Mary Magdalene, drove out,

Cast out the legion of the Lilim

And wrote his name in her.


Into Magdalene's castle of soul

And its seven chambers poured

The Lord the seven virtues

And strengthened Magdalene's spirit.


He poured into her beautiful head

The virtue of great wisdom

And taught her the science

Of the righteous Bible.


He poured into her sweet heart

The virtue of right courage,

So that she bravely went the way

With Jesus Christ to the cross.


He poured into her dear body

Virtue from the right measure

And taught the hetaera to live 

Chastely in the flesh and blood.


He poured into the personality

The virtue of justice,

So that she became the just,

Who hearkened to the divine command.


He poured into her the virtues,

Which come from God alone,

The divine-theological,

The virtues from above.


To God's revelation

He gave her the answer, the yes,

Obedient was she in faith

To the revelations of the Lord.


He poured hope into her,

The hope of immortality,

The resurrection of the flesh,

The divinity's heavenly paradise.


He poured into her love,

The love of God alone,

The greatest of all virtues

Is the love of the Godhead.


Love is like the fire,

The fire in the thorn bush,

The passion of love for God

Is stronger than death.



CANTO III


Mary Magdalene was

Friends with Susanne, who

Was mystically a bride of Jesus

In holy virginity.


Lord Jesus had redeemed her

From many an inward bond

And many a heavy chain burden

And many a worry, fear and distress.


And as Magdalene also

Susanne served her Lord,

Not only with her possessions,

No, with her very substance!


She served as a deaconess,

Not aspiring to the apostleship,

She served Jesus, her Lord,

With her goods and chattels and substance.


And with her own silver money

She promoted the pious work,

Alms she gave at all times

Especially to poor little children.


She also baked very good bread,

Which Jesus Christ loved to eat.

He loved this friend very much,

She was to him a beautiful earthly comfort.


When he alone in his pain

Was despised by all the world,

Susanne was his comfort

In her gentle kindness.


When he gave her his hand in greeting,

Her hand was like a cloud,

Like a cloud as light as a feather

And full of chaste tenderness.


He loved to look at her eyes,

They were brownish like the deer

And like chestnuts in the glow

And full of feminine charm.


Susanne was very affectionate

To Jesus, her bridegroom,

And also for Jesus' sake to

The earth's poor little children.


Johanna was the other woman,

Was Magdalene's friend too

And friend of Susanne and

Also a pious bride of Jesus.


But Johanna was married

To Chuza, her husband,

Who was a keeper of children in

The princely Herod's house.


The child keeper Chuza was

A tutor of little children,

Whom he loved like his own children

They were denied him.


But Johanna was very pious

And served Jesus, her Lord,

And often made supper

With bread and cheese from the cow


And cheese from the goat also,

And Jesus loved to eat olives

With the goat's cheese on the bread,

Olives Peter loved too,


They drank buttermilk and wine

And ate nuts gladly with it,

Jesus also loved fish

And Jesus also loved to eat meat.


Johanna always listened,

When Jesus spoke of wisdom,

When he quoted from the Scriptures,

When he spoke of God's love.


When Jesus spoke of the love

God has for his humanity,

So he often spoke of marriage,

As man and wife united in God.


The Lord did not expect

That even Johanna, celibate

Virgin should follow him,

He wanted her to be a wife


To be his pious disciple,

Who lives in pious wedlock,

Where man and woman united in God

Are a picture of God's love.


Johanna loved the conversation

With Jesus Christ, her Lord,

But she also loved to talk

With Magdalene a word.



CANTO IV


The Lord came to Bethany,

That's a little poor village

Near Jerusalem,

To his friend Lazarus.


Mary Magdalene there

With her sister Martha was,

And Jesus returned to the house,

Sat at the table with his friends.


And Martha hurried about the room,

Busy she was as a housewife,

So she tended first the dog

And then the black cat too,


Then she washed the clothes in the bathroom

And hung the washing on the line

And folded the clothes

And put them in the linen cupboard,


Then she swept the floor

And tidied up the house,

And went into the kitchen to the cooker

And then she made a midday meal,


She cooked some vegetables

And fetched herbs from the garden,

While the soup on the cooker

Cooked in the soup pot,


She went to the flower garden

And tended her roses red

And plucked out the weeds

And then went back to the cooker,


She put the plates on the table

And put spoons on the table

And lit a candle

And put on the bouquet


And said, Bon appetit,

O Jesus, enjoy your meal!

I cannot eat with you, Lord,

I have no time for this,


Eat thou with Brother Lazarus

And Magdalene this meal,

But tell Magdalene also,

She does too little in the house.


Mary Magdalene said

To Jesus her bridegroom,

Tell me of wisdom, Lord,

Of the word of God, the Bible!


O Jesus, Magdalene said,

All the pious tell me,

That I am possessed by the demon,

When I taste the suffering.


When the dark night comes over me

In the unintelligent soul 

And all mock me

And blaspheme thy disciple,


When I weep bitter tears

And no longer understand my God

And am crucified myself,

O Jesus, tell me, what is this?


And Jesus said to the disciple,

You know my Job well,

He also suffered greatly

And suffered in the counsel of his friends.


The friends were very pious

And they defended the Lord

And Job complained to the Lord

And yet God vindicated Job!


You also know the lamentations

Of Jeremiah, when he sang,

The rod of God chastises me,

I am so miserable, so full of pain,


God has become my enemy,

Become like a wild bear

And like a wild panther to me,

No pain is equal to my pain!


You know the psalms of David too,

How he stood by the river of death,

The snares of death

Almost overwhelmed him in the night,


How he cried to his God,

Why hast thou forsaken me, O God?

O my Magdalene,

The Son of Man is crucified,


And with the Son of Man

Crucified also the disciple,

But in the dark night of the cross

We are united, my bride!



CANTO V


When Jesus was in Galilee

The message was brought to him

That Lazarus was dying,

Magdalene's brother's heart.


And Thomas, whose name was also twin,

Spake to the Master and to the Lord,

Let us go to Lazarus,

That we may die with him.


But our Master waited,

Three days Jesus waited,

Then he went to Bethany,

Told this parable still,



There was poor Lazarus

A poor and a wretched man,

All covered with boils

And full of wounds in his body.


The dogs of the street

Licked the sore wounds.

The poor brother begged

For bread from a rich man.


The rich man sent Lazarus

Away from his golden house

And weeping Lazarus lamented

To the Father of Heaven his distress.


Now poor Lazarus died,

At the same time the rich man died.

The rich man went to hell

And burned in the embers of fire.


Like coals, black and transparent,

The rich man was in the fire

With other blasphemers

And the legion of demons


And out of the hellfire came

A roar, a cry of despair,

They cried aloud in anguish

In the eternal place of damnation.


But poor Lazarus

Sat in father Abraham's bosom

In heavenly bliss,

Where his father comforted him.


The rich man from hell cried

To Lazarus in paradise,

Make haste to my widow,

Make haste to my son


And warn them from hell!

My tongue burns from the embers,

Give a drop from the fountain

Of life, quench my thirst!


Then Lazarus said to him,

You down in the fires of hell,

We above in paradise,

There is no way from us to you.


And your widow and your son,

They do not believe the Bible,

How then should they believe me

When I speak of the judgment of the world?


When Jesus in Bethany

Had arrived at the gate,

Mary Magdalene came

And wept for her brother's death.


Mary Magdalene came

And sister Martha came with her,

And Martha said unto her Lord,

Lord, if thou hadst been there,


Lazarus would not have died.

But Jesus said this to Martha,

Poor Lazarus rises

As one alive from death.


And Martha said to Jesus this,

The resurrection of the flesh cometh

On the last day in the judgment of the world.

And Jesus said to Martha this,


I am the resurrection and

The life in eternity!

And Jesus came to Lazarus,

Who lay in his rocky tomb,


And Jesus cried unto Lazarus,

Arise thou from thy death!

And Lazarus came out of the grave

And Magdalene rejoiced.


And Magdalene praised the Lord,

Thou art the resurrection and

The life for ever and ever!

He who trusts in you lives forever!



CANTO VI


When Jesus Christ was in the house

Of Simon, who was a tanner,

Mary Magdalene came

To Jesus her bridegroom.


She had in her slender hand

A rose quartz flask full of oil,

Full of the very best nard oil,

That was the best in the land,


Yes, worth hundreds of denarii,

A labourer's year's wages,

That she poured on Jesus

And anointed Jesus for the tomb.


But Judas of Iscarioth

To the fair Magdalene said,

Waste not this dear money,

Give it to the apostles' treasury!


For the apostles' treasury gives

The money to the poor of the world.

But Judas, who loves riches,

Preferred to keep the money for himself.


For Judas was the treasurer,

Managing the apostles' money,

He took much from the till

And stole the apostles' money.


That's what Solomon once said,

Maybe it was Jesus Sirach,

The love of filthy lucre

Is the root of all evil.


For Judas of Iscarioth

Did not care for the poor,

He wanted his own goods and chattels

And money and gold from his God.


But Jesus Christ said this,

The poor ye have always,

You can always do them good,

If ye will do good to the poor.


Yea, if ye love your Lord,

Do good to the poor,

In every poor person, in every child

Your Master meets you.


You always have the poor,

I won't be with you long,

Mary Magdalene has anointed me,

Anointed me for burial today.


Wherever in the whole world

The message of joy is spoken of,

They call her Magdalene

Who has anointed the Anointed One.


And Magdalene looked to the Lord

And thought of the poor people,

The sick whom the Lord healed,

The children whom the Lord caresses.


And now Jesus was so close to her,

He who was the Wisdom of God,

He was the resurrection and

True Life in eternity.


And suddenly she saw her master

Omnipresent in the air

As a shining crystal

Of immeasurably bright light.


And in the great light of the Lord,

Omnipresent in the air

And on the earth, like spirits,

She saw the great multitude of the dead.


Mary Magdalene pondered:

The dead in paradise,

They are not above the region

Of Uranus in the starry universe,


The dead in Paradise

As in the bosom of our Lord

Are in the midst of us, are here,

Are spirits in the earthly world.


And Jesus looked upon Mary

And said to Magdalene this,

Paradise is in heaven,

Omnipresent is the kingdom,


But the dead are not far from you,

And if you pray a prayer

And when you break the bread of heaven,

The dead are among you.


The dead who have fallen asleep

In view of the body of the Lord

Are as the angels now with God

And stand by you as angels.



CANTO VII


Lord Jesus hung on his cross

And the soldiers of Rome around him

Mocked him as king of the

So wretchedly poor Jews.


The purple robe they took off

The king of the whole world

And stripped him of his petticoat,

Which was woven without a seam.


And he, the new Adam, hung

On the cross, on the new tree of life,

And he, the new Adam, hung

On the cross, and like Adam was naked.


O Jesus, you virgin,

Son of God, celibate,

How hast thou lived virginity

For your sexuality?


Thou wast a man of strength,

A labourer, a carpenter,

The most beautiful son of man

And thirty-three years young.


But now he gave it all up

And like father Adam was naked

And the soldiers diced

For this Jew-king's garment.


The mother of Jesus stood by,

Mary stood beneath the cross,

Did not fall down in despair,

She did not ruffle her hair,


She did not beat her bosom,

She did not throw herself on the ground,

She did not cry out in anguish

And did not howl in despair,


The mother stood beneath the cross

And thought of the angel's word:

His kingship is infinite

And everlasting is his kingship.


Mary took from her head

The veil of virginity

And gave it to Magdalene,

Who wept beneath Jesus' cross.


Mary Magdalene, you

Shall take this veil here

And with the veil you go

To your bridegroom on the cross


And with the veil cover him

Before all men the sex,

My veil of virginity

Shall serve him as a loincloth.


Mary Magdalene tied

The veil of the Mother of God

On the naked shame of the Son of God,

The new Adam on the cross.


The favourite disciple was there,

And he who saw it,

Testified that this testimony was true

And that his Lord and Master spoke,


O you, my beloved friend,

Look upon the Blessed Mother,

Accept her as your mother

And take her into your own


And accept her into your innermost being,

The mother of all men, she

Shall be your mother henceforth,

The mother of the Ecclesia.


And to the Mother of God said

On the cross so the Son of God,

O Woman of Revelation,

O new Eve, behold


The disciple whom I love,

You shall be his mother

And you shall love him, your son,

Mary, as thou hast loved me!


Mary Magdalene cried out

And fell down before the cross,

Embraced Jesus' legs and

She kissed the Master's foot.


And Jesus cried out, It is finished!

Mary Magdalene cried out

And threw herself down in the dust

And wept tears red as blood.



CANTO VIII


The dear Lord lay in the tomb,

He lay in his linen shroud,

Covered with his shroud of sweat,

Descended into the underworld.


Lord Jesus went to Hades

And took Lady Eve by the hand

And led from the realm of the dead

The saints into the light of life.


Mary Magdalene went

Early on Easter morning

To the tomb of Jesus Christ,

That she might anoint his body.


And when she was come into the garden

And drew nigh unto the rocky sepulchre,

She saw the stone rolled from the tomb

And looked, Yea, the sepulchre was empty!


But on the rocky slab lay

The shroud of the Saviour still

And pressed into the shroud

The image of the Crucified.


And on the rocky slab lay

The face-cloth still of the dear Lord

And in the face of the facecloth

The face of our dear Lord.


Mary Magdalene there

Wept many hot tears of sorrow,

For she and the apostles also,

They believed him to be the Son of God


And the Messiah of Israel,

But now the Christ was dead,

He, the immortal, the Lord,

The strong God was humanly dead.


Not even could she anoint

The corpse of her Master.

O great hopelessness!

Despairing depression!


Yes, she wanted to die with him!

The vanity of vanities

Life's existence seemed to her only

And only death was welcome!


Suddenly the gardener stood there

In his green gardener's skirt.

Mary Magdalene said,

Where is the body of my Lord?


Where have they laid him?

For she had not known

That this gardener was Christ,

The gardener of the garden of the soul.


But the gardener said to her,

Mary - just this one word.

Mary Magdalene said,

My Rabbi, O my Master, you!


For then she knew the Lord,

When he called her by name.

Then she fell down before the Lord,

When she knew the dear Lord.


Then she fell down before the Lord,

As if to kiss his feet,

And she clasped his legs

And pressed herself against him!


And Jesus Christ said to her,

Mary, do not hold me,

I am not yet ascended.

But go as an apostle


To the little company of the apostles,

To him that leadeth the apostles,

To Peter, and to the whole circle,

Say that I am risen


And that I am ascending to God,

To my God and your God,

And say that the apostles' band

Shall come to Bethany,


For from Bethany, the village,

And from the Mount of Olives nearby

I ascend into heaven to God,

To my God and your God,


For God's heavenly paradise

Is not above on Uranus

And not on Venus and Saturn,

Rather, heaven is in God!


I enter into heaven

And there I prepare the place for you,

The place of man in the light,

In my God your place too!






PART SIX


CANTO I


1


In the breath of spring, with her body's spring blossom, walks in the forest of Lebanon Magdalene, seeking Messiah everywhere, guided by love, beguiled by seven demons with sinnes bewilderment, there she is addressed by friend Joan,

Beneath the breeze that haunts the red carnations, beneath the bush where the honeybees hum and the nightingales flute, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!

Where the women of Jerusalem weep for themselves and their children, where the cedars of Lebanon rise above the vines, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!

Where the musk is fragrant and the slender lilies shine like lances of the sun that pierced the heart of Messiah, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!

Where King David's crown is golden like the sunflower, where bees buzz above the nectar-filled chalices of roses, as arrows whirred from the quiver of David's friend Jonathan, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!


Where the awakened sunflowers look at the laughing creation, branches of the magnolia tree shine like heart-wounding lances, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!


Where the elm is entwined with vine and the Jordan River winds through the bushes of Mount Hermon, Messiah walks in spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!


The cinnamon tree exhales its spice and the balsam vine overflows with flowing balsam oils that intoxicated even the ascetic of ascetics, John the Baptist. There Messiah walks in the spring. Dance, Magdalene, with your friends. Easter is beautiful through love!


From the seed flakes of the lions' teeth, spring weaves itself ethereal tents in the groves. The breath of spring is like the breath of the Holy Spirit, inflaming hearts. The cherubs steer the radiant throne chariot through the golden lanes of heaven.


Pointing to the Messiah whom all the daughters of Jerusalem love, to the overflowing love-giver, the most beautiful of all the sons of men, who is near, Joan speaks to Magdalene,


Anointed with oil of myrrh and oil of nard his brown body in a seamless ephod, with the crown of thorns in the brown curls, a cord with the cross around his neck, shining with the gracious smile of Wisdom, thus Messiah walks with the daughters of Zion. With his disciples he speaks of Lady Wisdom.


With her full white bosom, Joan embraces the adored Saviour, Messiah, and sings the psalm to the tune: Die for the Son! Thus Messiah walks with the daughters of Zion. With his female disciples he talks about Lady Wisdom.


Magdalene, who looked at the Eros of God in the fiery eyes of the Messiah, the King of Roses, stands absorbed in deep contemplation of the most beautiful of the sons of men. Thus Messiah walks with the daughters of Zion. With his female disciples he talks about Lady Wisdom.


Susanna nestles against Messiah's cheek and clasps his strong neck. She kisses the tulip lips of the beloved with tender kisses of love. Thus Messiah walks with the daughters of Zion. With his female disciples he speaks of Lady Wisdom.


Mary, the mother and companion of Christ, draws Messiah away from the Jordan River and leads him to the olive press in the olive garden. She sews him the seamless skirt. Thus Messiah walks with the daughter of Zion. With his first disciple he speaks about himself and her, he speaks about Lady Wisdom.


When the cymbals sound, Joan dances blissfully, when the shepherd boy blows the flute, Magdalene swings her womanly cymbal, when the strings sound, Susanna moves her slender feet with measured steps. Messiah is the dance and the daughters of Zion are the dancers.


He embraces Joan and presses his heart against her full bosom, he tenderly offers his hand to Susanna, but Magdalene, his favourite, he kisses passionately on her scarlet mouth. Messiah is the bridegroom of his wise virgin.


He who longs for the universal bliss of all creatures, whose pure lily body is the body of the bodiless God whom all the wise virgins of Jerusalem love as their one-and-all, behold! Magdalene! how Messiah is intoxicated with your love!



2


While Jesus loved all the virgins of Jerusalem, Magdalene went away, grieved because she was not his only love. In the Sharon meadows, south of Mount Carmel, where the bees were buzzing above the Mary grasses, Magdalene said,


O Jesus! Your lily lips overflow with nectar when you play the psalm to the shepherd's flute to the tune: Virgins! I praise your enchanting, gracious looks and your ears that listen to prayer. Oh, I cannot help thinking of Jesus walking with the daughters of Zion and speaking of the joys of the Spirit.


I would adorn thy brown locks with a peacock's feather, and hang a bow and arrow about thy shoulder, from which my Rabbi's mantle falls. Oh, I think of Jesus walking with the daughters of Zion, speaking of the rejoicing in the Holy Spirit.


The daughters of Tyre with their beautiful loins and the daughters of Sidon with their female pelvises look at Jesus' lips, which overflow like lilies‘ nectar. Oh, I can't help thinking of Jesus talking to the daughters of the East about the joys of Paradise.


As the good shepherd, he embraces with his saving arm ten thousand ewes and beloved little lambs. His hands like ivory with jasper rings and his legs like marble pillars of the temple illuminate the darkness of this world. His heart like a glowing rose is the light of the cosmos. Oh, I can't help thinking of Jesus as the Son of God visiting the daughters of men and speaking of the joy of eternal life.


From his anointed brow to the face that darkens the sun, the light pours forth from the divine light. His left hand embraces the hearts of all, the throbbing hearts beneath the swelling breasts. Oh, I think of Jesus walking with the wise virgins of Jerusalem, speaking of the delights of the marriage of the Lamb.


A cherry hangs over his ear, prayer answered, and ointments perfume the whiskers of his cheek-beds; he walks in sandals and pilgrim's cloak, and is surrounded by Solomon and Samson, and by lions of God and morning stars. Oh I think of Jesus talking to Mitka, Mary's sister, of the union of heaven's holy wedding.


He leans on the cedar of Paradise to conquer the spirit of death. He overcame the seven demons in my soul by a single glance full of ardent love. I think of Jesus choosing the mystical friend Magdalene and speaking to me as the sister of the angels of the dance of the angels.


Jesus counts all my tears and all my prayers. He does not cast me out, for he is the King of reconciliation, he wipes out my guilt. Even if Jesus walks in love with all the daughters of men, and even if my soul seeks him at night and yet does not find him, but I cannot help it, I must still seek him, for where else should I go but to him? For he has words of eternal love!


I am hidden among the mallows of Magdala and he is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the shade of the caper bushes. O my friend, Mother Mary, to me, the contemplator of Jesus, bring Jesus who is the smile of God, bring him to me, Mary, the victor over the seven demons!


I blush with shame when I see Jesus, him, the Word of God, the messenger of eternal love. O my friend, Mother Mary, Jesus, the victor over the seven demons, bring him to the friend of his love, that he may unite with me in the dark night of the soul!


Grass is my bed, cedar beams and cypress boards my bed. At my side rest the Lord! I am ready for the kisses of the Holy Spirit, for the embrace of eternal all-mercifulness! I am ready to suck from the chalice of the wedding feast the wine of ecstasy! O my friend Mary, bring me the victor over the demons, bring him to the marriage of the Lamb, that he may pour love into me in the mystical night of union!


My eyelids have sunk, my cheeks glow with shame. I overflow with love! Trembling I love the Saviour, trembling with fear of death I want to embrace the Saviour from death! O friend Mary, the victor over Satan, Jesus you bring to me for the marriage of God, for becoming one with the One Nature of the Godhead!


Nightingales hover around me and sing to me, the mystical rose of the dawn. I glow for the hero of love, the radiant knight of God! Malva of Magdala, Henna flowers of Cyprus grapes wave in my long black hair. On his bosom I see traces of nails. O my friend Mary, you bring him, the victor over death and the devil, Jesus, to me, to the wedding night in the bridal bed of the cross!


Bells and cymbals ring on the chains on the ankles of the shackles of my feet. He walks the promised land in dusted sandals. I wear the charm girded around the loins of my mind. I seek him, for I will wash his feet with the dew of my tears and dry his feet with my long hair. O friend Mary, the victor over eternal death, Jesus you bring to me, that I may enter God's bosom, paradise!


I am as dead in the experience of supreme bliss! His eyes are like flames of fire! The blossom of my body is falling, but he is the triumph of divine love! O friend Mary, the victor over eternal nothingness, Jesus bring you to me, that I may unite myself with God as the mystical spouse of God, that I may be divinised by the pure grace of God into God's mystical goddess! Hallelujah!



3


Jesus, the heavenly victor over the god of this world, took the most beautiful of all beauties, Mary, to his heart. He left all ninety-nine women and embraced the only ever-virgin.

Eastward and westward went the Messiah, the fiery arrow of divine love in his heart, went the Messiah after Mary. In the torrent valley of the Jabbok near Mahanaim, he rested on the bank of a water in the shade of green myrrh bushes with Mary.

Oh, when Mary saw me, said John, the disciple of the Beautiful Love, how I played with Joan and her children, and how I burned with fire for Magdalene the Beautiful, and how I was courteous to Susanna, and how I could not forget Mitka, then Mary went away. I did not stop myself. O Lord, how the offended one has gone away!

What plan does she devise? What wisdom is she thinking about? What can the beauty of this world and fame and gold give me? Without Mary, how senseless is suffering and how joyless is life! O Lord, how the afflicted one has departed!

I think of her face. Her fine brow arches are like the scales of truth in the judgment of the world. Her face is like a shining white lily blossom. Her face shimmers like a honeycomb woven by the diligence of honeybees. O Lord, how the offended one has departed!


I always carry her in my heart. Her image always hovers before the eyes of my soul. Shall I seek her among the spruces? Is all my lamentation in vain? O Lord, how has the offended one departed!


Slender maiden, heavenly mistress, supernal virgin diva! I must think of your heart, the mother's heart pierced by seven swords of pain! Where are you going? Can I follow thee? O Lord, how has the offended one departed!


You have appeared to me, apocalyptic Virgin! Verily, verily, yea and amen! I saw thee smiling before me in the night sky with these eyes of mine! Ah, why was the encounter so brief? May I still rest as your beloved son in the crook of your arms! O Lord, how has the offended one departed!


Forgive me, heavenly Lady, for leaving thee! Never again will I turn away from thee, Lady! Look at me with those merciful eyes of thine, most beautiful of women! I melt in heavenly delight before your loveliness, beloved! O Lord, how has the offended one departed!


These fetters around my heart are not of the old serpent. These spices in the bag at my breast are not of poisonous magic drugs that deceive the mind. Incense do I burn, and ashes do I scatter upon my head. O love me often and fiercely and long, for I am lonely and wretched and sick with love!


You mistake me for Jesus - or why do you smile at me so full of everlasting motherly love? Take the bow and the quiver, light virgin, and aim at me! Shoot the arrow of God's love into the bosom of thy friend, the stag on the Sheath Mountains!


O thine eyes are dove's eyes! From thy loving tender looks of love my heart glows in my heart! My heart has been sick with love all my life.... You are the love of my life, Eternal Beloved!


Your fine black brow is the bow, your curved eyelash, the long silky lash is the arrow, your shell earlobe is the sinew. O love of God, how you have bestowed on this glorious Queen of Heaven all the weapons of God!


From the brow-arch the arrow-shot of an infinitely loving gaze thou shootest, this love must be deadly! The black veil of thy night-black hair, the long smooth silken hairs, are possessed to the tips by the Eros of God! O thou art full of the magic of love, Mary!


Intoxicate me, thou superbeautiful virgin diva, intoxicate me thy wine-red mouth with kisses of the Holy Spirit! But your immaculate breasts, youthfully firm and shapely, how they play tender love games with my immortal spirit!


The heavenly tenderness, the inexhaustible love of your caressing looks, the sweet fragrance of the rose of your lips, the flowing wine of your wise word, the paradisiacal delight of your melting kisses of love....


Since the memory of your work of love presents you presently before me, how can the misery of exile on earth last any longer?



4


Jesus, walking on the banks of the Jordan by the caper bushes, was greeted by Mitka, Mary's virgin sister.

She burns the incense of myrrh and nard, cinnamon and aloe powder. The gleam of the moon makes her sick at heart. The air seems poisoned to her by the venom of the serpents on the mountains near Ashtaroth. She is lovesick, suffering from separation from Jesus. Jesus, wounded by the fiery arrow of love, I want to woo you forever!

To protect you from the captain's lance and the sting of death, I shield your heart with a shield of my love. Mitka builds you a bed of mauve blossoms. She is sick with love in the vale of tears of exile. Jesus, wounded by the fiery arrow of heavenly love, she wants to woo you alone as her beloved!

From the roses of eternal love and the lilies of virginity for heaven she builds you a love nest, ready for the eternal love embrace of bliss, the soul's bliss in the love bed of paradise! She is sick with love until she is with her Jesus! O Jesus, wounded by the deadly arrow of divine beauty, she desires thee alone for husband!

The white lily of her virgin face gleams with the balm of tears, as the full moon drizzles night dew. O she is sick with love, in exile far from the fatherland of Christ! O Jesus, pierced by the deadly love-bullet of divine beauty, she chooses you alone as the soul's spouse!

With scarlet make-up she paints thee as the fire in the burning bush, which burned but did not consume. She prays before the image of the invisible God. In her hands she holds the harp and sings the psalm to the tune: The mute dove among strangers! O Jesus, how sore is she far from thee! O Jesus, inflamed with love, the flames of Yahweh, she chooses you as her only and eternal spouse!

She sings towards the return of Christ: O Prince of Peace, I fall at your feet and adore you! When you look at me, wine instead of wormwood flows in the cup of my soul. It is sick with longing for the distant beloved! Mortally stricken by the violence of God's love, she burns only for Jesus, her beloved!

Her thoughts do not comprehend you, O God, the eyes of her soul do not see you, O God. She weeps, she laments, she suffers, she wrestles with herself in the night of the soul, she dies the death of the ego, she triumphs in the martyrdom of heavenly love! O Jesus, she dies for love of you! O Jesus, wounded to death by the God of eternal life, she swears eternal fidelity to you in the marriage of the Lamb with the nymph Jerusalem!

Even the glorious rosary that adorns her slender neck so splendidly seems a fetter to her, Mitka, far from thee, Messiah!

Fragrant ointment of aloe, cinnamon and ylang-ylang itself seems to be her snake venom on her virgin body, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

Her sighs' never-ending breath seems to be the fire in the thorn bush, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

She turns her almond eyes this way and that, like almond oil the dew of tears drips from her almond eyes, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

Full of sorrow she looks at her virgin bed of blossoms, which is lonely, so lonely that it seems to her to be the den of hell-henna, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

She lays her pale cheek in her snow-white hand and mourns like a melancholy moon in the night, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

Lord! she cries in exile on earth, thou dove of God! Look at me! And she longs to die for love of you, Mitka, far from you, Messiah!

She is afraid, she suffers, she is anxious, she is melancholy, she is afraid, she is lonely, she is miserable, she is in pain, she weeps, she languishes, she wants to die! Only your grace keeps the blessed Virgin alive. O Saviour, you physician of souls, you are her only salvation!

O Saviour, you holy physician of souls, you alone wise God, if you do not tear the lovelorn, whose salvation alone is the wine of your blood, out of this evil world, O Son of God, you are fierce as God's wrath!

Under the burning, storming, trembling and whispering of the sighs of love, the lonely Virgin, thinking of incense and lilies and the full moon, feels inconsolable melancholy. She directs her inner sense solely to the body of Christ. Silence still breathes in the land and is already fading away...

Who was usually comforted by a smiling glance from your infinitely loving eyes, now she suffers too much from the distance from the beloved! How it pains her so much that spring is coming again - and she is still far from her heavenly home!



5


Jesus said to Mary: Go to Magdalene, bring her my wooing! And bring her to me! Thus sent as an envoy by the victor over Satan, Mary hastened to Magdalene and said to her,

Where the spring airs blow and carry the pollen and the butterflies, where the bell-flower opens to the sucking bee, where boyfriend and girlfriend long for each other, O sister, how there Jesus in the crown of thorns pines for thee, thou distant beloved!

In the middle of the day the sun darkens. Jesus is ready to give his life for love! The fiery arrow of divine love burns in his heart! He laments, I thirst! How Jesus pines for you in the crown of thorns, you distant beloved!

He must close his ears to the buzzing of the honey bees, the honey germ of love is too sweet for him. Separated from his friend, his soul is joyless. In the dark night of the soul he perishes with grief. O sister, how Jesus pines for you in the crown of thorns, you distant beloved!

In the forest of Lebanon he prays. He has left the golden temple. In the olive garden he rolls in the dust of the earth and becomes pale and pallid from fear of death and sighs wistfully for the bride. O sister, how Jesus pines for you in the crown of thorns, you distant beloved!

Where love's goal is reached, the wedding joy in the garden of paradise, in the realms of the blessed he already dwells in spirit with his spouse. Ah! How he thirsts for the cup of thy thighs with the wine of ecstatic union of love, the blood of total surrender!

When he is turned into the Father's house, into the glory of eternal love, O Magdalene, girded on the loins of the mind, touch him, the King of Love! Under the tree of life in the whispering of the Holy Spirit, the Beloved waits for thee in the crown of thorns!

He plays on the shepherd's flute the song of the King's wedding, a song of love to the tune: Roses. He breathes in the wind you exhale in your sighs. Under the tree of life in the whisper of the Holy Spirit, the beloved waits in the wreath of thorns!

If the turtledove floats out of the crack in the rock, if the wind caresses the bush, he thinks Magdalene is coming. Then he prepares the green bed of agreement in the garden of the soul and waits for you in his love passion. Under the tree of life in the whisper of the Holy Spirit, the Beloved waits in the crown of thorns!

Leave the cymbals, the tinkling magic belt around the waist, the chains around the ankles, the clasps on the arms and the lapis lazuli earrings, wrap yourself in black linen and go to the cross weeping with love in the dark night of the soul! By the tree of life in the whispering of the Holy Spirit, the Beloved waits for thee in the crown of thorns!

At your two breasts veiled by your beautiful long black hair, at your breasts he wants to rest and wants to dwell in your heart as in the radiant throne of the third heaven. Under the tree of life in the waving of the Holy Spirit, the Beloved waits in his crown of thorns!

Let your long black hair flow with the red henna blossoms and weep streams at the feet of the Beloved and entwine the legs of the Beloved with your bare arms! At the tree of life in the breeze of the Holy Spirit, in the crown of thorns the Beloved waits for you!

Jesus' heart is meek and humble, behold, the midnight of the world is here. Hasten, Magdalene, with the throb of love in the swelling bosom, and quench Jesus' burning thirst with the dew of your love's kisses! By the tree of life in the roar of the Holy Spirit, the Beloved waits for you in the crown of thorns!

The sun has darkened. You shy friend, Jesus' desire for love burns in deepest midnight! Like the lovesick nightingale, Mary calls to the Rose Magdalene: Hurry, dear sister, dear bride! The hour has come for the wedding of divinity and humanity in the dark night!

Magdalene embraces Messiah with her strong arms, she kisses his wounds, she quenches the burning thirst of his love with the streams of her tears, she gives him her heart in her quivering bosom! Godhead and humanity were separated in sin, behold, they are now intimately united, for the marriage of the Lamb with the nymph Jerusalem has come in the deep midnight of the cross!



6


Upon him are cast the faults and aimings of all, all the sins of the night-walkers, upon him, the light moon of the night, the Immaculate is stained therefrom, the moon, at the mouth of the dark night a blood-red drop of wine.

When the moon was darkened and became red as blood, Mary saw that Messiah had to die alone! Then Mary began to weep with loud lamentation,

Alas, I am lonely in the garden of thorns, my virginity now loses its fruit! To whom shall I lament? All my friends have left me alone!

Whom I pursue into the wasteland and the desert, the lance of death pierces his heart! Seven swords of pain pierce my heart! To whom shall I lament? The friends have all left me alone!

To be crucified with the Crucified - what else would I have? Should I bear these mortal pains without the Saviour, to lose the Saviour? To whom should I lament? The friends have all left me alone!

What unspeakable pain this fatal spring night brings me! Who has lived through this spring night in love's lust? To whom shall I lament? The friends have all left me alone!

I press the rose to my burning heart, it pierces my flesh with its thorn! The thorn of the rose is like the deadly arrow of divine love! To whom shall I lament? The friends have all left me alone!

Jesus goes after the women of Jerusalem and says to them, Women, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children! To whom shall I lament? The women friends have all left me alone!

She sees Messiah abandoned by God! Mary sees herself abandoned by the Messiah! Then, in the midnight of the hour of Christ's death, she dreams of the marriage of the Lamb and the nymph Jerusalem in the garden of love of the heavenly paradise.

Skirt aproned as the mother of beautiful love, henna flowers in her long black hair, I saw the blessed Lady united to the Lord!

Drunk with the wine of the Lord's love, while the myrrh bag lay between her breasts, I saw the blessed Mistress united to the Lord!

The moon face, the light-drenched face, veiled by long black hair, sucking at the cup of the mouth the wine of the kisses of love, I saw the blessed Mistress united to the Lord!

Moonstone and lapis lazuli on the shell ear as jewellery and the magic belt of all graces around the motherly virgin tighs, I saw the blessed mistress united to the Lord!

Smiling with the most charming smile, rejoicing in the friendly smile of the wise master, fluting with pursed lips on the bone flute the psalm to the tune of virgins, I saw the blessed mistress united to the Lord!

Awe-struck, meek, humble, sighing with inexpressible sighs of the Spirit, gazing with those merciful eyes of hers, filled with love, I saw the blessed Lady united to the Lord!

Like the holy face of the Lord is the light moon in the dark night. It spreads over my heart infinite pangs of love! On the face of the beloved, glowing with love, on the kissing scarlet mouth of the beloved, the Prince of Peace paints a sign with musk. He is the stag on the moon and she the hind on the moon. O how Jesus now plays by the pools in the Garden of Eden!

In the night of the long black hair that flows around the beautifully arched cheek, he weaves carnations and margariths that glow like light and fire. O how Jesus now plays by the pools in the Garden of Eden!

The heavenly feast for the eyes, the breasts, the pasture of life, he adorns with stars of sapphire and lapis lazuli, the sweat in the valley of the breasts is the dew of the moon. O how Jesus now plays by the pools in the Garden of Eden!

The lily-armed virgin with the slender snow hand he adorns with honeybees of gold and roses of ruby, and adorns the hand of the Lady with the wedding ring of gold of Paradise with the Shoham stone of Eden. O how Jesus and the Virgin now play by the pools in the Garden of Eden!

Around the delight of the cup, the tighs of the beloved, around the loins of the mind he tied the girdle of all loveliness, all heavenly charm. O how Jesus and the Virgin play now in the Garden of Eden!

The fiery arrows of love in the heart, the jewelled swords of love's pains in the soul, they press heart to heart. O how Jesus and the Virgin are now playing in the Garden of Eden!

As the victor over death, the Son of Eternal Love, caresses the lovely Virgin, ah woe is me, what am I suffering here seven pains of death and sufferings of the Passion, the companion of Christ, without all consolation? O how Jesus and the Virgin play in the Garden of Eden!

How must you suffer, companion of Christ, as the most lovable of all the sons of men is crucified! If the sinless one dies, the spotless one must also die! To the marriage of the Lamb and the mystical marriage of God my soul shall now surge through the night of death!



7


At last the night of the cross has passed. At dawn, when the rays of the dawn glow like fiery arrows of divine love, Mary the Pieta spoke to the dead God resting in her arms,

Your eyes wept tears of blood on the cross, your forehead is still bloody from the crown of thorns, yet even your extinguished eyes are still mirrors of God's love to me! Lord, only go down to the realm of the dead, Saviour, only go down to the dead, Saviour, beloved with dove's eyes, return to the companion Mary!

Your crimson rose lips kissed Magdalene's black eye make-up blurred by tears, that your rose lips are now blue-black as night, and so nightly is your holy heart to us, Messiah. Lord, only go to the realm of the dead, Saviour, go down to the lost, Redeemer, and return to the companion Mary!

The battle with death wrote bloody wounds on your body with nails and lances, Christ, as God once wrote the divine instruction with the finger of God on the tablets of stone. Lord, only go down into the realm of shadows, Saviour, go to the dead souls, Redeemer, and return to the companion Mary!

Do not your feet of peace still shine from the tears of the loving sinner? Behold, she watered thy body with the dew of love. Thus, on the wood of the cross, the Crucified Himself became the tree of life of Paradise, and the body of Christ became the fruit of immortality! Lord, only go down to the dead, Saviour, raise the dead, Redeemer, and return to the companion Mary!

I bit myself in pain with the ivory teeth that shine like freshly washed twin lambs, bit my purple rose lips that are like scarlet cords, and bit my lips bloody. Do I also keep the body of the crucified God well in my womb for all time? Lord, descend into Hades, Saviour, and deliver the shadows from the power of Hades, Deliverer, and return with the souls to the companion Mary!

Soon only walk again in the gardens of the dawn, reborn like a heavenly child, and rejoice your companion and visit the weeping sinner Magdalene, and inflame all your wise virgins with the fire of your heart, love, the flames of God! Lord, save the dead from nothingness, Saviour of all souls from eternal death, Deliverer, and return to your loving bride Mary, and return to all your loving virgin Marys as Bridegroom of their immortal souls!



8


To the afflicted, to her friend Magdalene, said the holy Mother Mary, when Magdalene wept for the distant Messiah:

The Lord with the morning rays of Easter morning visits you! On earth there is nothing more beautiful than Christ's Easter morning, its fruit is sweet to your palate! Thou cool one, be not cool to thy friend!

Your breasts are sweeter than dates, do not deprive yourself of the erotic mysticism of your spiritual friend, beloved! You coolness, do not be cool to your friend!

I say it again and again in simple words: Do not close your heart, but give yourself completely to the loving heart of your friend! You cool one, do not be cold to your friend!

Why are you so introverted? Why are you so closed? Why are you so caught up in your melancholy? Come, sing more joyfully! All the virgins of Jesus are excited about the resurrection and rejoice! You cool one, do not be cool to your mysterious friend!

Behold, in the paschal garden the mystic Bridegroom prepares for thee the green bed of mysterious union! Awake and be filled with the image of love in its beauty! You cool one, do not be cool to your mystic friend!

Drive sadness out of your heart! Hear my message: nothing shall separate you from the love of God! Do not be cold, you coolness, do not be cold to the friend who loves you!

Jesus will come on Easter morning to the garden of love. A closed garden is his friend's bride. He enters through the flower gate and wants to kiss you with the kisses of love! Scare away all sorrow and rejoice, for Jesus loves you and wants to overflow you completely! You cool one, do not be cool to your loving friend!

Do not harden your heart before the sacred heart of Jesus, do not deny yourself the caresses of your heavenly friend, do not turn away from the sweet affection of God, do not be an enemy to your divine friend! Otherwise the glimmer of the moon will sting you like the catastrophes of the sun, otherwise the morning dew will become a consuming fire for you, otherwise the sweet love play of the heavenly love will become eternal death for you!



9


After Messiah greeted his companion Mary in the morning, Mary with breasts like twin gazelle fawns and eyes like turtle doves, he went into the garden of olive trees and cinnamon trees and jujube dates as the gardener of the garden of the soul. Then Mary, the friend of man, spoke to her friend Magdalene, who had dyed her black hair with henna and braided it, and wore a golden brace in her hair:

The Reconciler, who with the song of love on his lips embraces your feet, he now waits for you in the garden of the soul, he waits under the olive tree of wisdom. Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

Carry your fruitful bosom like grapes into the vineyard of the Beloved! Gird thy loins of mind with the girdle of God's grace! Let the crotchets ring and the bells on your ankles and walk like a partridge into the garden at Easter! Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

Do you hear the voice of the good shepherd, you only lamb, you favourite little sheep? Under the song of the nightingales that flute of love, go to the rose garden of love! Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

The hornbeams beckon to you with green foliage rustling in the breeze. The blood beech rushes to thee from the Saviour on the blood. The ivy twines tenderly around the strong trunk of the oak. The vine climbs faithfully up the elm. They all exhort thee to haste. Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

This heart of mine, inflamed with love, this breast like jade peaks and these breast tips like jade buds, this bosom of Mary only ask, girl. Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

Accompanied by Susanna and Johanna, by Tiphsah and Tirza and by Mitka, beat the timpani and sound the cymbals, the sounding cymbals of the great Hallelujah, and dance in the worship dance to the Ark of the Word of God! Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

Put your strong arm around Mary, your true friend, and let your strings of pearls around the swan's neck greet the Son of Mary with blessings at all times. Woman, close to the near Master, Magdalene!

The Messiah prays: The Beloved will come and greet and bless me, and her soul will caress my soul!

In a spirit full of thoughts of wisdom, the Messiah looks out for Magdalene in the Easter Garden to see if she is coming. The power of love shines through him, he rejoices in the jubilation of love, he melts in the glow of love, he walks lovingly in the love of nature, the mysterious friend.

Blue eye make-up on the lids, ivy in the curls, at the heart the rose of the new dawn, wrapped in ethereal veils of silk, the dawn listens between the noble firs. And spring comforts the sad virgins of Christ.

The sad virgins of Christ in bodies like white silk, with eyes like diamonds, they walk softly. The blue night of the old noble firs tests the gold of their faith for purity.

At the hedge-rose gate the golden clasp shone in the black tide of Magdalene's hair, silver glittered the girdle of her grace, rubies gleamed on the chains of her feet. There Magdalene beheld the Messiah, the most beautiful of the sons of men!

Enter here into the green tent of appearance of the risen Garden God! Play love games in blissful delight, Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah!

Where the grasses spread to the bed in the shade of the rustling bamboo, play love games and let the string of pearls ring on your full bosom, Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah!

Where the temple of Solomon is built by the magnolia tree, anointed and consecrated by the morning dew, play love games in shy tenderness, beloved, you who are like the soul of the blossoms, O Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah!

Where the winds rustle like the sweet breath of the Holy Spirit, sing, O Muse of the Master, with the song of larks singing to the light heavens, Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah!

Where the bumblebees drink sugar water and the feelers of the moths suck eagerly in the bell of the bellflower, play tender love games, Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah!

Where, after the nightingales' sobbing flute, the lark's jubilant hymn resounds joyfully, sink down in sweet desire, Magdalene, at the heart of the Messiah, sink down in sweet desire at the breast of the Messiah, Magdalene, and give yourself completely...!



CANTO II


1


Messiah spoke: I saw a woman who was immaculately beautiful, the fairest of women, she was an immaculate full moon and a fruitful vine, her eyes were twins of blue flowers, of a soft dusk with evening stars, blue flowers that swam in still pools of milk, that shimmered on the waves of beautiful love, yes, her eyes were twins of turtle doves, that girled of love in spring, of nature's soul mated in a spring of love. Around her long slender neck she wore the beaded cord of the rosary with balls of white ivory. The pearls played with her pretty bare breasts. I felt as if divine love was pouring streams from heaven out of the shell of divine love, pouring onto the wooden statue of a garden god! He who offers consecrations of total devotion is blessed with such overflowing streams of divine love! - Behold, such is my Messiah, the Bridegroom of loving souls, said the poet Dodo.



2


Messiah said: Why did this daughter of the moon cross my path? A deep magic glance of soul sparkle from her eyes into my eyes, the mirrors of my soul, a roving glance full of secret desire, how did it strike a love wound in my heart! O day of love's pain, night of love's death, why did you rise? My tender gaze and my dreaming mind lost themselves in her pretty bare breasts with the birthmark of the left breast. Love cannot be extinguished. Even oceans do not extinguish the fire of love, the flames of God! Her words are sweet and kind and come softly to my ears. I wanted to leave her, but my feet remained in her presence as if spellbound by a magic circle. The fetters of longing bind my soul. - But, said the poet Dodo, love is like a boundless sea!



3


Messiah said: Today is the day of delight! I saw the beloved in her bath! Streams of pure water flowed through her long black hair like strings of pearls of the rosary of crystal drops! She anointed her beautiful face with oil of joy, as if she were cleansing an unstained mirror of God! She revealed to me her two bare breasts, which were like alabaster cups! Free she let fall her charis girdle of all charms! The lock of the virginal zone was unlocked! Now there was no limit to my longing!



4


Messiah said: Where my beloved's twin feet walk, there the roses blossom. Where her body shines in beauty before me, electric lightning flashes through me. The radiance of her face shines more beautifully than the sun. She has a throne in my heart. When her eyes look at me, I see loving stars of the cosmos. When her soft laughter, her softly muffled cooing full of fine humour delights my soul, then the honeycomb becomes bitter with jealousy. When she opens her lashes and the tips of her lashes pierce me, myriads of fire arrows of divine love pierce me. To gaze upon such beauty I created the world! To be allowed to look at it just once after my death, I gladly suffer my death on the cross! - Dodo said: Messiah, because I love you, I will lead the beloved to you as a spotless bride and flawless friend!



5


Magdalene's friend Salome said: What gentle melancholy in Magdalene's soul! She loves to be alone. She walks alone in her garden and looks at the roses and listens to the cooing of the pair of doves. She gazes thoughtfully at the sun and looks dreamily at the clouds. She forgets to eat and drink because she is so absorbed. She wears the simple robe of a pious hermit and yet looks glorious like the Queen of Heaven. She takes the green ivy wreath from her hair and shakes the long black curls, rightly proud of the beautiful splendour of her hair. She raises her hands to the sky and speaks to the wind. What might she say to the spirit of the wind? - Dodo spoke: Love for the cosmic Christ fills Magdalene's heart like a morning star!



6


Magdalene said: How shall I be able to pronounce, how beautiful is my Jesus, my Jesus, my Jesus! How shall I describe with human words the dream form of the vision? His appearance resembles the open sky of the endless night and yet is lighter than lightning. His long curls are brown and his thick beard is brown. His robes are fragrant with cinnamon and aloes, so that all the delightful moon of Minnemaien does not smell as sweet as my Messiah. - Dodo asked: What else shall I say now? In him the love of the Creator has exhausted creation!



7


Magdalene said: I had prayerfully desired to behold Messiah. When I saw him, I was filled with deep reverence for the living God of love. Since that night I have been forever in love with Jesus and foolish with love. People say: She is out of her mind! What am I saying, what am I doing? Tears drip incessantly from my eyes. The heart in my bosom pounds incessantly like a hammer. What drove me to Jesus? Now my life is entirely in God's hands. How can I say what the thief of hearts did to me at midnight? He stole my heart, he stole all my love and he went away. But at his parting he gave me such great love that I can never forget him! - Dodo said: Listen to me, O dear wife, you will soon see the Lord again!



8


Salome said: Can I say of the love of Mary and the Messiah? When they recognised each other as pure mirrors of divine wisdom, the eternal bliss of human souls awoke in their burning holy hearts! When the fiery arrow of divine love pierced their hearts like a lance and like a sword, only one burning longing remained in their two single hearts! When their souls are united, the soul of the Lamb and the soul of the nymph, then they will be eternally one united soul. Be aware at all times that no one and nothing can defeat you but the eternal love of God alone! For your eyes glow like sparks and reveal that the Immaculate Virgin belongs to the Lord and the Son of Man consecrates himself to Our Lady! Yes, His Body of Light and Her Body of Light will be joined together in the Glory of the Holy Spirit in Paradise, in the Glory of God's Light, in the Rose of God's Heart! How long will he be so crucified, how long will she be so crucified with him? Will they eternally shed their bleeding hearts full of love like this? Will they be eternally so foolish with love? Conceal your longing, Mary, conceal your passion, Messiah, for your humility's pride is the mystic silence of mysterious, ineffable love! - Dodo the poet sang this, and his Queen Lady Wisdom deeply understands.



9


Messiah said: Beloved friend! Your black hair puts the raven to shame; it is like the herd of black goats rolling down the mountainside. For shame of your glittering face, the full moon in the sky turns crimson. The doves of peace shun your gentle tender eyes. The nightingale of minstrelsy falls silent when your blissful voice flutes like a peace flute. The swan in the pond hides from the grace and charm of your gait. Why do you not come to me and speak to me, blessed one, gentle one, humble one, peaceful one, queen of the May? All the beauty of Mother Nature pales before your beauty, fairest of all daughters of men! Do not fear me, beloved, open wide your heart to the cosmic Christ! The magnolia blossoms fall from the magnolia tree at your feet in homage to your pretty bare breasts! The alabaster cup full of love's wine leaps into the Easter fire out of lust for your cup-like breasts! The apples fall from the trunk in homage to your apple breasts and the pomegranate glows with shame at the allure of your majestic bosom! The trunk of the garden god stands in your garden with great desire as you stoop to your furrow in the bed! The long white lily bows in humility before the white of thy naked arms! The reeds tremble tenderly and in awe at the delicacy of your pale hands, the slenderness of your feminine fingers! - Dodo, the poet, asked: How much more of the magic of love shall I slur with infatuated incantation, tuned to the keynote of eternal love?



10


Magdalene said: O my friend Mary, how do I tell you all my inner melancholy? The flute of Christ pours sweet poisonous balm of love through all my soulful limbs! He raves before me, he woos me, he implores me by the twin fawns of the gazelle in the meadow, I hear him pleading for my love with the Song of Songs. My body aches for sweet pleasure and my soul longs for the true bliss of love! In the most intimate moments of love fulfilment, the cup of my inner being wants to overflow with flowing fire! Then I close my eyes so that flames do not shoot out of my eyes. When I dwell in my mother's house and the lust of love shudders through me, I wrap my own arms around my own body and create peace to the consuming embers of my love for the distant beloved! Silent, silent as a cat I creep through my house at night on velvet paws. A kind fate has mysteriously hidden my love deep within. My soul is magically enchanted by the inwardness of mysterious love. The magic belt of all charm slips from my hip, my virginal zone awaits the beloved to recognise me in the dark night of my soul with the power of his love-total devotion! - What else can the poet Dodo say where the mysterious voice of Providence itself speaks?



11


Salome said: When Magdalene came to her suitor Christ for the first time, her heart throbbed in her bosom with shame and awe. Magdalene was as still as a golden image of a saint; she looked neither to the left nor to the right. Then Messiah took Magdalene by the hands and seated her at his side in the throne chair of his Minne. The blissful beauty veiled her glowing face with the veil of her long black hair. He stroked the hair from her forehead (only the God of love himself was able to stroke the tangled curls from her sensitive forehead with eternally tender hands). Then Christ, with peaceful kisses of love, kissed Magdalene on the scarlet mouth. Magdalene's friends were jealous, but Christ alone kissed the chosen friend Magdalene on the mouth. Then she gently nestled her head against his heart. - This is a rejoicing psalm of the poet Dodo, rejoicing the holy heart of his Prince Jesus!



12


Salome spoke: I see young Jesus in all the pride of his blooming youth. He raves of the memory of the night of the first kiss: O beautiful Magdalene with the sweet countenance! How did I receive you with boundless desire in my innermost soul! How you kissed me so gently and chastely in the love-dark night! You smiled with your fine, quiet laugh, the softly muffled girre that sounds like the little silver bell at the marriage feast of the Lamb. You are my rapture in a thousand inner images, my dream of love's effervescent voluptuousness! Your words are sweeter than honey. Your smiling eyes look so mischievous. You have written your name in my heart with your blood! - This, said Dodo, is the psalm of the first kiss.



13


Magdalene said: O Mary, my friend, what pains I must suffer! What can I do that Messiah may ease my pains of love? I am young in my heart, younger than Messiah, who is ancient in his eternal wisdom. I am timid and gentle. Cruel was the Lord to me, he sent me many pains of the soul! How can I tell all the sufferings of the dark night of the soul? Love burned within me, I lost myself. My ego broke within me. When did he unlock the lock of my belt? He embraced me, I was paralysed with delight. The heart in my bosom pounded like a hammer. I was a tempest in the power of his love! He saw that my eyes overflowed with hot tears of love. Did Messiah have pity on me? My beloved burnt my lips with the fiery wine of his kisses! The moon in my night was eaten up by the old serpent. Jesus drove the nails into my breast! I see the crocodile fighting with the lion, and I think of the battle of my love with Christ. - O loving wife, said Dodo, you know how Christ's love crucifies the beloved!



13


Mary said: Make haste, my girl Magdalene, make haste to the young man Messiah, blessed one, for the Lover is waiting for you! The night is falling from the stars. Soon the day will come, when love can no longer hide in the womb of mother night. Dearest friend, do not let your face be seen, your glittering face, or the night will shine. The turtledove in the garden thinks thy face is the moon, and thirsting for dew, she will coo before thy face, to drink the flowing light of thy face. Silence, gentle voice, for if you speak, the butterfly will take you for nectar, and your glowing face for a rose, and with the tender feeler will grope for the cup of your lips to suck. You seek beautiful love, eternal love. The May night is short. So hurry, friend, and enter the house of love. - Dodo sang this to his mistress Maria.



14


Messiah said: Dark is the night and deep is the darkness. When will the beloved come to me, the lovely woman who is all my ardent desire? The path is steep and thorny and teeming with poisonous serpents. How great is the danger and how tender are her bare feet! God in heaven, I will trust thee my beloved. Protect the beauty and lead her to me! Black is the night and wet the ground. My heart in my bosom glows. The path is so narrow. Thick is the dark night. Angel, take care that she does not strike her foot on a stone. Like stars her gaze, her soul like a holy angel! She is the Hagia Sophia in human form! - Yes, said the poet Dodo, a loving woman knows no other power than the power of Beautiful Love!



15


Messiah spoke: I have bought you with my blood. Now you come to me. I see thy love for me. - Magdalene said: Ah Immanuel, thy cloud of glory called me by day, and the pillar of fire of thy glory called me by night, and brought me to thee. - Messiah said: Great is the temptation. Dark is the night. I cannot see your body in the darkness. How did you find your way to me? - Magdalene said: God's lightning showed me the path, beloved. - Messiah said: Through the dark valley and the deep ravine, through the vale of tears and the valley of tears went thy way. Did the thorns cut thee sore? - Magdalene said: I was as bold as a swan in death, and that comforted me. - Messiah said: The night of the soul is deep and you are alone. - Magdalene said: Yet I am not alone, for with me is my Lady, the Beautiful Love!



16


Magdalene said: Today shyness is taken from me. The Beloved satisfied my longing! What shall I say, O love? I must smile softly. So wonderful was his love today! The rain poured down on the earth. The mountain rose up to the cloud. I looked into the emerald mirror of the water and was in another world. So full of wisdom is my beloved and powerfully his word enchants my soul. He gave rest to the restless. I sheltered myself by the sacred heart that glows for me! The Prince of Peace placed me on his lap. He played with my fine veil until I fell asleep. - Dodo cried: O blessed bliss of love!



17


Magdalene said: How shall I speak of him? He is the nameless name! Whether I saw him in a dream, whether I saw him in reality when I loved him, I do not know. He was very near and yet beyond the world. The lightning flashed through the night. A nectar-sweet celestial stream snaked through the night. The night took the moon in its mouth. The stars shuddered, raining streams of sparks. The sky opened up. The mountains shook. The earth split and poured into embers. The wind blew mightily. The butterflies staggered drunkenly. The seas overflowed. But it was not yet the end of the world. - How can all this be true, asks the poet Dodo.



18


Salome spoke: Confused, her black curls of red henna hung around her ravishingly sweet face, like black storm clouds around the bright full moon. Moonstone earrings swayed on her shell ears. Beads of sweat glistened lightly like diamonds on her white forehead. Woman beauty, your face gives delight. Wilt thou fight on in the battle of love, Magdalene, how shall Messiah save himself? Bracelets around bare arms, silver rings around slender fingers, chains around bare ankles, all this is like music to the rhythm of love. Drunk with the wine of love, love gives itself completely! Triumph! Blow the flute! Strike the cymbal! Now there was silence around the loins of the beloved. The warrior in the battle of love was defeated, eternal peace had come. - The master of the poet Dodo completes the universe in love, heaven and earth unite.



19


Dodo, the poet, spoke: Drunk with the heavy red wine of love, Messiah draws Magdalene onto his lap. She looks so mischievous and laughs with a soft girren like a lenzschalk and Herzschelm. Tenderly she nestles against him. Her body is the music of love. Magdalene is in love, Messiah is full of passion! Heart and heart unite! Both are drunk, the fiery arrow of divine love sticks trembling in the target of the heart of flesh! - Dodo sang of this great love.



20


Salome said: O such love never existed before! Two hearts so intimately united! They are still together, already they sigh for fear of a moment's separation. If she is only hidden from him for a short moment, he already cries tears of longing. If he is far from her, then he is like a fish, pulled out of the tide and thrown on the beach. No, among men such love has never been experienced. The sun loves the rose, but the rose withers, the sun wanders merrily on from east to west. The nightingale is called the suitor of the rose, his mistress, but nightingale and rose never came together in love. When the butterfly sucks the calyx of the flower with its tender feeler, the butterfly comes to the flower, but the flower never comes to the butterfly. - Nothing in this world, said Dodo, can compare to the love of the Messiah.



21


Magdalene said: My beloved, you are my eternal life! To you I consecrate body and soul, heart and spirit, all that I am and have, to you I consecrate my family, my people and the whole earth, to you I consecrate my immortal destiny: I am all yours, Beloved! You are my God, O cosmic Christ, King of the Universe! You are adored by all bridal souls, God! I am only the poor handmaid of the Eternal, little wisdom has been granted to me and I do not know how to pray to you. Nevertheless, with body and soul I offer you my total surrender of love! You are my way, my truth and my life! You are my resurrection and my eternal life! My heart knows no other rest than you alone, my God! - The saint and the whore are both loved by God, said Dodo, I know nothing of custom and sin, I know only Jesus' pierced heart!



22


Magdalene, Jesus' holy lover, loved him in his three states. She loved him as the living one, she loved the dead one, she loved the risen one. To the present and living Christ she has shown the tenderness of her love and deeds, to the dead and buried one the perseverance of her love, but the impatience and the outbursts, the raging, the giddy weakness and debauchery of her abandoned love she has had for the one who went to heaven, for Jesus Christ, the risen one.


When I watch the Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, I think I see a love that has gone astray, that is hardened by its deviation and longs for the right way at the feet of Him who is the Way Himself. Does love urge her on? Her hot kisses speak for it; the word of Jesus Christ confirms it. But what kind of love is this love of Magdalene? Love can do everything; love dares everything; love is not only free and trusting, it is also ambitious and full of enterprise; and I see Magdalene how she remains behind, how she does not dare to lift her eyes and look at this face, how she already considers it too great a happiness to even come close to these feet, I see her sighing and not speaking; I see her weeping without a prospect of consolation, she gives all she has and all she is and cannot even bring herself to ask for his mercy. If love drives you, Magdalenea, what are you afraid of? Dare everything, do whatever you want. For love does not dare to be modest, its desire is its rule, its rapture is its law, it has no measure but its excess. It fears nothing but that it might fear; its right of possession rests in the boldness to lay claim to everything, and in the freedom to try everything.



23


But of course, love has these rights only on condition that it always takes the right path. If it has lost its way, it must return by a long diversions and must tremble and stay away and weep over its error and atone for its mistakes through its shame. Love, what were you actually made for? For the beautiful and for the good, for the some and for the whole, for the truth and for the essence and for the source of essence: and all that, that is God himself. Yes, if you had always walked straight towards God, you would dare everything with Jesus Christ, you would undertake everything in him. The God who became man to belong to man would have given himself entirely to your embraces, which would have been pure and yet free, calm and gentle and eager and insatiable at the same time. You would claim everything without fear and possess everything without exception. But, love, you have lost yourself to foreign objects for which you were not made. Come back, poor tramp, come back, but come in fear from just punishment for having let thy liberty go astray; come bound up with pain, for thou shalt put on the misery of thy loose frolics; humiliated and abased come back, that all may know that thou hast been bold enough to shake off the yoke and forget thy chief lord.



24


Love unites, sin separates, but penitent love has something of both. Magdalene rushes towards Jesus: that is love; Magdalene does not dare to approach Jesus: that is sin; she enters boldly: that is love; she approaches in fear and beside herself: that is sin; she makes Jesus' feet fragrant: that is love; she waters them with her tears: that is sin. She looseth and wasteth her hair: that is love; to dry the feet of Jesus: that is sin; she is greedy and insatiable: that is love; she dareeth not desire: that is sin. But she weeps, but she sighs; but she looks up, but she is silent: this is love and sin in one. How good this penitential love is, with its bold submissions, its suppressed liberties, its trembling assaults. Once again, how good it is, in that it loves out of reverence, in that it does justice and renounces its rights, which come to it in name and in its capacity as love, only to use its penitent feelings to set justice above all else.



25


Let us listen to what love speaks in the Song of Songs. There she breathes nothing but the union, the chaste kisses, the most intimate embraces of her spouse. Bold and impetuous as it is, it begins: "He kisses me with the kiss of his mouth. The penitent love, too, would doubtless wish to abandon herself to this delightful zeal at the very beginning; but the embarrassment of her desolate life does not permit her to speak in such high rapture; instead of singing with her beloved: He kisses me with the kiss of his mouth: how infinitely happy she already considers herself to be allowed to say: He tolerates me with my kiss at his feet. This is the hymn of penitential love; Mary Magdalene sings it with her tears, with her sobs, with the melody of her silence.



26


Nevertheless, we must not believe that she completely renounces the embraces of her spouse. All these dear affections, from which she seems to depart in the conviction that she is not worthy of them, - in a more secret sense she strives for them. Thrown down at her friend's feet, completely occupied with these hallowed feet and without the courage even to look at his face, she nevertheless already embraces him spiritually inside her heart. But she suppresses this desire, which is too free after her sins; and by suppressing it, she gives it another more intimate and delicious existence. This desire, which stops humility, goes towards its object by another way. It approaches by withdrawing: the imprisonment it imposes on itself gives it freedom. Penitent love has such wonderful and mysterious wiles; it advances when it flees; it reaches the good it pursues by, as it were, discarding it. It dare not say to the friend with that freedom of the beloved, Come, come, beloved of my heart, come quickly; but it finds the means of calling him in another way when it speaks, Depart from me, depart from me. "Lord, go out from me," says St. Peter, "I am a sinful man." What a new and unheard of procedure, to invite by repelling. But the spouse understands this language. He knows that he must be desperately lacking in order to repel him in this way; and this desire for his possessions, expressed by the opposite, touches his heart and arouses his compassion; for he sees at the same time the impatience of a truly loving soul and its secret sighing, which is all the more violent the less it dares to speak aloud, and the compulsion its love does to itself when, out of sheer reverence, it does not reveal itself. Then the nature of his own goodness breaks through, full of desire, such as it is, to pour itself into his creature, and urges him in the sense of that soul which has not itself the courage to urge him; so much so, that in pitying the violence it does to itself, he overtakes it, and, forestalling it, in the promised grace assures it of his reciprocating love. "Her sins," said he, "are much forgiven, for she hath much loved." So you see, penitential love, how strongly your secrecy, your silence, your stillness was able to affect the heart of Jesus. Magdalene, who desired nothing, obtained everything, for Jesus was in the depths of her heart and heard there all that she said, and heard even better what was beyond her to say.



27


I never tire of contemplating the marvellous circumstances of our holy penitent, the strife and understanding of her zealous justice with her love rushing to the attack. Possessed by her feelings, Magdalene almost does not dare to approach Jesus, and yet she cannot leave him. What middle might you find, love, to reconcile such contradictions and to reconcile love and right, which challenge the opposing resolutions? In what follows, a mediator takes place: Magdalene, without embracing Jesus, throws herself at his feet: thus she satisfies justice; and how skilful and inventive is she not in this! By putting on her feet, she holds Jesus whole: and thus her love is satisfied. Jesus can no longer escape her; he is held fast by his sanctified feet; and I think I hear Mary Magdalene saying with the beloved, "I hold him, and will not leave him;" or with Jacob, "I will not leave thee, for thou blessest me;" or rather, trumping Jacob, "I will not leave thee, even when thou hast blessed me." And truly, Jesus blesses her and forgives her sins, but in so doing she does not leave him: as she can at all, she comes again and again to his feet: for she is not concerned with the blessing, but with him himself.



28


What do I see there, love! In truth, a wonderful spectacle: Magdalene in Jesus' captivity and Jesus in Magdalene's captivity. When she lays her head at Jesus' feet, she clearly enough makes herself his prisoner; but with his feet she captures him at the same time. In what way does she hold Jesus' feet? She holds them with her mouth and kisses them a thousand and a thousand times; she holds them with her eyes and showers them with her tears; she holds them with her hands and clasps them and oils them. But all this does not stop, it takes chains. Loosen your hair, Magdalene, and bind with it the feet of Jesus. O most tender chains Magdalene has ready to make her conqueror a prisoner: Do not be afraid, Magdalene, he who confesses in the Song of Songs that he may have his heart bound with a single hair of his beloved, how shall he find his feet out of the net of all your hairs? But perhaps he will escape, perhaps he will be able to break these bonds with ease? No, no, don't look for others. You must know that therein lies the genius of love: it does not refuse to be imprisoned, only it wants its freedom at the same time. That is, it wants to be imprisoned only by its own will. She wants bonds that are gentle to the touch and tender. Shackles that are strong just because you don't think of breaking them. So your hair is enough to take it and hold it tight, you couldn't find better bonds.



29


Do I dare say here what I think? These tears, this wasted perfume, this hair that makes these feet dry: I admire in all this the charming tendernesses, nay, if I am really to render my thought in full -, the holy gallantries of penitent love. No, I cannot regret having expressed myself thus. There is a kind of true gallantry in it, which wins Jesus' heart to disparage all the accessories of worldly gallantry, and to lay them carelessly at his feet. In this act her love, this love's simplicity and modesty, come, as it were, of their own accord to surpass the vain and all worldliness and all the beneficence of profane love. In the midst of these caresses, in which penitential love is poured out at the feet of Jesus, Magdalene is lost in tears and cannot be consoled for having begun to love Jesus so late. She begins to feel what her heart was capable of, and it grieves her beyond measure to have dealt badly with love for so long. She blames herself, her eyes, which a deluge of tears drowns; her breast, against which she beats hard; her heart, which she tears with her sobs; but she is too weak to avenge such a disgrace, and so she holds her head at the feet of Jesus like a sacrificial animal, which she submits to his wrath.



30


And as she now feels that instead of a ray of lightning he has rays of grace for her, she is agitated; again she is seized with a shudder, again she is enraged against herself; and since no torture wants to come, she allows herself to be overcome and ruined by doing good. Thus she remains in the shame into which the goodness of her Saviour has plunged her. Touched by mercy in all places of her ingratitude, she wants to be the prey of an infinite pain, in order to only somehow stand up for the right of the offended God who is too kind to her. If anything can comfort her in the excess of this pain of having used herself too late on God, it is a certain joy in compensating through the pain itself for the shame done to him and in tearing her heart away from all creatures in order to give it to him, in a sense showing by example what a pity it is to love anything but him. It seems to me that with tears she says to Jesus Christ: "Take, Jesus, a heart that is no longer worthy of you, since it has belonged to others than you; but one that at least draws from its unhappy experience the advantage of being convinced in its whole feeling that you are the only one who deserves love.



31


So, in the position of having found this One who deserves love, she calls back, as it were, from everywhere, from all contracts, the portions of her love in order to dedicate them to her One. All that she has in strength she gathers together in the midst of her heart, and in an endless admiration for this new lover she seeks for him a new supply of love that can no longer be used up. Go, heart, exhausted, weary, which has never found anything large enough to accommodate in it the immeasurable quantity of its love, go, pour yourself into the ocean; lose yourself in the infinite; let yourself be taken in by the All. There arises in the heart of Magdalene I know not what, a tenderness, a passion, which can only be applied to Jesus Christ; which pines, which yields; which, letting itself go, follows him. She dies at every moment, and at every moment, kissing the feet of Jesus, she begins a new life, which she immediately offers up again. She gives, she wastes everything: her perfume, her hair, her tears, her sighs, her very heart. It is as if she wanted to exhaust herself for her beloved; and yet she fears again to exhaust herself, for she intends to give without end.



32


Her prodigality is boundless, but her greed is no less so. She cannot get enough of kissing the feet of Jesus, and Jesus had an eye for the ravenous hunger of this insatiable love. "Since she came in," he says, "she has not ceased to kiss my feet." Look: she has not ceased; there is already an infinity: her love has others. But among all these infinities there is nothing more infinite and inexhaustible than her tears. Again and again her sins come to her, and the rivulets of her weeping rise from the banks. She would weep herself to death and in her desolation go to the point of despair, if she did not see in her crimes a material that can be used to celebrate the goodness of her beloved and his Saviourhood; if she did not see in her repentance the proof of experience for that word which the beloved, long after, pronounced in her favour: "But one thing is needful." Is it possible to think of anything that would show more clearly how much this one thing is needed: the bitter sorrow of those who have lost their way among the multitude? Yes, living God, you alone are necessary to man, for no one departs from you and does not lose himself, and no one returns to you who has not repented without limit and without end that he was able to forsake you and desire something else. Thus in all penitent souls there is an intemperate desire to blot out and abolish their past, and to bear witness to all men in heaven and on earth that thou alone art needy.



33


With this word of Jesus Christ, the holy love in Magdalene's heart came to superior perfection; for it showed her the frightful jealousy of her husband and how much he cared to be the only one. Martha, it is true, made herself abundantly busy, but it was nevertheless in the end for him; nevertheless he rebukes her, and he commands Magdalene, his lover, to occupy herself only with him and to leave above it everything that only has reference to him. So fine a distinction does his jealousy make; so great is the exclusiveness he demands. These sacred words: "But one thing is needful" contain in their mildness a fire that burns out every heart and destroys every creature in it, until only the One, imperiously, fills its space and rejects every other thought and every other object. O God, who can say what a tremendous overthrow this word brings about? It plunges the heart into a loneliness, into a poverty that no nature can bear; for this One is deadly through its ruling will, which allows itself to be traded, and which snatches from the senses and the spirit and all the faculties of the soul everything that pleases them. The assaulted soul, in the midst of its destroyed abundance, now, of course, closes itself with incredible strength to the one necessary. This is how it looked in Magdalene's heart when the word was spoken. First it struck like lightning and overturned all the desires inside and consumed the whole, so that nothing remained in the heart but the mere direction of this word's exit. Then it showed him, the utterly impoverished one, that one necessary object and seized it in its midst and lifted it into the midst of him. And now Mary Magdalene is bound to Jesus, heart over heart, the most intimate place to the most intimate place. Only for Jesus Christ does she still have life, and who can be surprised that she follows him everywhere, into his journeys, into his tortures and even into the horror of his grave?



34


She looks everywhere for her only one, the only object of her love, the only sure support of her failing heart, and she does not find it. How do you actually think, Jesus Christ, that you pull at hearts with such strength and take them so firmly to yourself and then go away when they do not expect it at all? What cruelty you are! What a strange game you play with the hearts that love you!



35


This is the way Jesus Christ usually behaves. He attracts hearts powerfully, he makes them greedy and insatiable, he wins them over, he masters them, he makes them cling, he gives himself to them in a thousand ways, until they are so much involved in him that they only desire him. And at the moment when their share has become so great that they can no longer withdraw, he withdraws, steals away, and terribly haunts them by escaping and withdrawing. They complain, but Jesus laughs at their complaints; he lets it happen that they exhaust themselves and consume themselves in unspeakable desire. He himself lays hands on them to set them on fire, and watches from afar, and it does not move him; he makes fun, as it were, of their indignation and frenzy. He also treated Mary Magdalene in this way.



36


At first nothing is too much for him. She asks for his feet: he gives them; she wants to kiss them: he leaves them to her; she wants to oil his head: he tolerates it; the Pharisees grumble: he stands up for them; Judas takes offence: he praises her. In another encounter, Martha tries to pull her away from him: Jesus approves of the gentle indolence of her love, looking only to him, and puts it above her sister's busyness.



37


Charmed by his goodness, Magdalene binds herself to him and joins him. And Jesus, as soon as he sees love sufficiently fastened, carefully withdraws his hand. He gives no more, that is still nothing; but he takes away little by little what he has given. Since he is to die, it is his will that Magdalene be present; he speaks to his holy mother, to his dearest apprentice; he has no word for his pure lover who perishes below on the cross. She is not deterred, she follows those who bury him to note where he would be laid. As soon as it was day, she hurried with perfumes and found the tomb empty. Peter and John, finding the divine body no longer there, withdrew: Magdalene remained and endured. She looks in the tomb from time to time, fearing that her eyes may have deceived her, and does not give it up, still seeking him for whom her heart sighs. What do you seek, Magdalenea? He is no longer there. Two angels come and ask to be told the cause of her sorrow, and do not give her back one comforting word, nor tell her where Jesus Christ is.



38


Finally he appears himself, but like a stranger. He makes himself known, perhaps he wants to satisfy her hungry love. Not at all. On the contrary, he wants to torment her beyond all measure. For as she thus, quite beside herself, rushes towards him, Jesus says: "Touch me not ... but go to my brethren, and tell them that I ascend unto my Father, unto my God." O God, what a lover to appear to his beloved only to tell her that he is now leaving. But so let her at least kiss your feet. No, he will not. She throws herself to it, still thinking she will find in Jesus the responsiveness of before, but Jesus pushes her away, saying, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father." Words that seem precisely invented to torment their love for all eternity. Do not touch me now that I am between your hands, wait to touch me until I have ascended to the heavens. Keep away from me while I am here, be patient to touch me when I am no longer on earth; only then will you gather all your strength for it. Couldn't he just as well say to her: 'Wear yourself out, break your heart in hopeless work. To speak to love in this way is not to have it for the best?



39


I can easily imagine what terrible consequences these words of Jesus left in Magdalene's heart, for now she sees that Jesus is going and has the will to have a stronger effect on hearts than ever before, especially in the time of this absence. Now she is understood that with His return to the Father the whole travail of wanting to reach Him and touch Him begins in the first place. "Seek, says the apostle, what is above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." So she sets out and seeks and consumes and hardens and tears her heart with the sharpness of her longing. This is the moment when love, deceived of what it desires, comes out of its senses and can no longer endure life. Drawn and pressed, Magdalene can only embrace Jesus as if wrapped in the darkness of faith, and what she embraces there is more his shadow than his body. What will she do? Where will she turn? Nothing, nothing remains for her but to cry incessantly with the Beloved: Revertere, Revertere! Turn back, O my beloved, turn back. Ah, I only saw you for a moment. Turn back, turn back again. That I may kiss your feet just once more. But Jesus does not turn back: he is deaf to the desperate cries of a lover of such passion.



40


The reverter of the beloved is the true hymn of the Church, just as that: "Come, come near, show yourself, break through the clouds" is the hymn of the synagogue. The synagogue has not yet seen him, but the church has seen him, heard him, touched him, and suddenly he was gone. She had left everything for his sake. "Behold, we have left all and followed thee," says the Apostle Saint Peter. Afterwards Jesus had married her, and she brought him her poverty and her meagreness as marriage goods. Immediately after the wedding he dies; and when he rises, it is only to return whence he came. As a disconsolate young widow he leaves his honest marital sweetheart, unprovided for. What shall she begin but to cry incessantly: Revertere, Revertere. Come back, my God-wife, come; hasten your return, which you have promised. All the bowels of the beloved are burning towards this second appearance of Jesus Christ, but the waiting time for this reunion is a single pain.



41


This is the state of the Church, to which the words of the hymn apply: "The turtledove is heard in our land." For before the artifice of Jesus Christ there was a voice heard in which was longing and lamentation over his hesitation; but after his ascension there arose another voice, another sigh, another groaning. The groan of the Church deprived of her spouse whom she had possessed only for a moment; the voice of the turtledove who has lost her mate and now finds nothing on earth and takes refuge in wastelands and shunned places where her lament has its freedom.



42


Magdalene's life is no different, tears are her only nourishment; she lives only by sighing. The holy friend must find extraordinary pleasure in making his friend suffer. All the centuries until his coming were bitter with lamentations over his absence, and now all the centuries after his coming will pass with even more lamentations that he disappeared so soon. He only appeared for a moment, and even then with so much caution and concealment that it was hardly possible to tell who he was. We saw him, says Isaiah, but he was not knowable, and we waited for him in his presence. "Vidimus eum, et non erat aspectus, et desideravimus eum." Why all this mystery, but because he is above all well pleased with the cry and sigh of lamenting love? It is indeed the intention of this holy spouse to keep us constantly in expectation, in an expectation that groans and longs for him. He has one consolation for us, with which he stalls us: A little while longer, a little while longer. "Yet a little while," he said to the synagogue, "and I will move heaven and earth, and there will come the Desired One of the nations." And to the church he says, "Over a little, ye shall not see me: and yet over a little, ye shall see me." This word is full of mildness, and yet, if you watch, it is a cruel word. Do you know to whom you are speaking, Jesus Christ? Do you realise that you are speaking to hearts that are in love? You reckon, as if it were nothing, with centuries of deprivation, and yet to him who truly loves you, moments become eternities. For you are eternity itself, and who can still reckon by moments when he knows that in every moment he loses the whole of eternity? And yet you say: A little while longer. That is truly no consolation. It is rather a mockery of love. That is mocking its sufferings and playing a game with its inability to wait and the extreme agony of its untenable state.



43


Is it to be wondered at that love, since it meets with rejection even in the loving of its spouse, falls into a kind of madness? That she flees all company; that she seeks out secluded places and there delights in looking at objects that have something terrible and evil about them, because she recognises in them, as it were, the terrible images of the devastation that the lack of the desired one causes in her. What else but this drove Magdalene into the horrors of that ghostly desert and into the soundless awfulness of the dubious caves in which she threw her heart to the fury of her abandoned and forsaken love?



44


In this sacred song it is so right to notice that love loves the land and solitude because there it is somehow freer; the hustle and bustle of sociability, even the very sight of people, numbs it and distracts it. That is why the friend of the Song of Songs can only be seen breathing gardens that are closed, forests where no one comes, and the green of the meadows where flocks graze among flowers and grasses. "Come, my love," says the beloved, "let us go out into the country and stay outside. Early let us rise to the vineyards, and see if the vine be already in blossom, if the oranges have blossomed; if the blossoms of our trees knot and promise us fruit." There is not one of these words that does not breathe the air of aloneness and the bliss of rural existence. Whatever the case may be: whether love, in its sense of freedom, loves the open countryside because there it can dream bigger and radiate its stormy desire more happily; whether it, averted from noise, in its urge to come to itself, seeks out the remote places which, with their silence and solitude, entertain its ever-active idleness; whether any other reason drives it to love rurality - this much is certain: it is enchanted by it. But above all there is a certain love that fills the heart with delight: I mean the love that is just beginning. She especially loves the gardens, the flowers, the well-kept and pleasing lands, which, if I may so express myself, contribute to her joy through her smiling face. Exactly the opposite is that other love which is beside itself and desperate and driven to extremes by the separations and privations, by the contemptuous vituperation of the beloved and by its own vehemence. This love demands to see the gruesome places in which, as I have already said, she sees her desolate situation clearly depicted. Thus, in one passage, the spouse of the Song of Songs no longer calls the beloved to him from gardens and meadows, but from the midst of rocky mountains and terrible wastelands. "Arise," he cries, "my friend, my fair one, my wild dove, come from the clefts of the stones, come from the depths of the holes in the rocks," and in another place, "Come, my bride, from Lebanon, come from the top of the mountains and from the edge of the precipices; arise from the dwellings of lions; arise from the lairs of beasts of prey." Such places are the refuge of an abused lover in her desolation. There she recognises in everything the image of her lost heart, into which frenzy and despair divide like wild ravening beasts. In this state everything becomes horror and horror; even the consolations only irritate her and no longer bring her to misfortune; for everything that is not the beloved himself becomes a new burden and cannot be borne.



45


I think this was more or less the state of Mary Magdalene. She always saw Jesus Christ in the death throes of the cross; her hearing, no, the ground of her soul remained pierced by that last cry of her dying spouse, the truly terrible cry that could tear one's heart out. And again and again the deadly word sounded in her that a loving heart cannot endure: Don't touch me. These were hardly sighs any more, they were a roar which her afflicted love uttered, and Jesus, implacable, left her in her isolation, without the support of his sacraments, without the communion of his sanctified body, without any encouragement on the part of the apostles, who were his representatives on earth, even without the sight of his holy Mother, of whom one might think that he had left her still further in the world after himself, so that she might comfort his widowed spouse in the first hardship of her still new sorrow. What do you say now, Magdalene, to Jesus, your beloved? Do you complain to him that he has deceived you? No, no: he does not deceive us; or, if he does deceive us, it is a very peculiar kind of deception. For he cleaves us more intimately to him, just at the time when all our senses perceive nothing but distance and divorce. Probably, as long as this pilgrimage lasts, love must be so treated. It is necessary that it should be nourished by faith; that it should live by hope; that it should grow under the most deadly abandonment, under the most deadly deprivations; for it should not die alone, it should perish as a martyr of Jesus Christ; its own ardours should be martyrdom and the beloved himself its tyrant.



46


Let us open the sacred song; let us read in it the mystery of love: we see: the beloved always sighs, she always longs; she continually fades away, she passes away. There is almost no moment of pleasure for her. Always: Come. Always: Turn back. She almost always says: I looked for him, I held him, just once. And never: I hold him, I possess him. He comes as if in leaps and bounds, like a deer, like a young stag. He is there, he speaks, he escapes. He looks in, but through the windows. He shows himself, but behind the bars. He finds the girlfriend asleep and doesn't want her to be woken for fear she might feel his presence too much. She has held him, she says, and she affirms that she will never let him; but by then he is gone. He comes back, he knocks at the door, he urges that it be opened to him; she hesitates a trifle; he puts out his hand through a crack; he hands in something, a gift, a grace: and this touching goes to the beloved's very bowels. She jumps up and runs to unlock the door: The beloved is already on his way. She looks around, there is nothing to be seen: she searches and can find nothing; she cries, she calls, nothing answers. Inconsolable at his flight, she runs after him. The guards, making the rounds around the town, find her, completely out of her mind; they beat her; they wound her. The shepherds of the church have nothing but reproach for her slowness, that she has not been quick enough in pursuit of him whom one reaches only when one hurries. Their reproaches hurt her heart, but all this does not bring back her beloved, and in the end she has no recourse but to implore Jerusalem's daughters - loving souls like herself - that if her beloved met them, they would at least tell him that they had seen her miserable and sick with love. So quickly the beloved passes!



47


Of such a nature is the love of those who are on the way; God only communicates himself in it by concealing himself; not to satisfy, but to provoke love. For, as long as this banishment lasts, he is never more present than when he seems so far removed as to be lost from sight, and never is his glory more over us than when he takes it and destroys it until we see it no more. So also the illustrious beloved has at last understood by experience that it pleases God to give Himself by eluding Him, that His attempts to flee are enticements, His making us wait a kind of impatience, His refusals gifts and His hardships tendernesses; she has seen that she never possessed Him better than when she thought she was losing Him; her trials have initiated her into the mystery of this love in exile, so that at last, exhausted by much crying, she resumes the outbursts of her song with the words: "Flee, my beloved, fuge, dilecte mi. " Now she wants him to flee with the same urgency that she wished his coming earlier. "Turn back, my friend," it once said, "like a deer and like a young stag." And now it is, "Flee, my beloved, like a deer and like a young stag." What a strange, incomprehensible behaviour of the beloved! First to call out with so much ardour: Turn back, my friend, and then suddenly to say: Flee, my beloved, and to wish for his feet the swiftness of deer and stags, in order to speed up his flight, even to exaggerate it. Is this inconstancy or disgust or the expression of amorous annoyance? None of these. This is one of the wonderful effects of the love-mystery. She realises that during this life her husband is giving himself by running away, by hiding, by keeping himself secret. So at last she urges him to flee, and the most wonderful thing is that she does it at a time when he has more tender caresses for her than ever before. "O thou," he cries, "who dwellest in the gardens, among the flowers, in the good smell, by the fruits, and among the delights of holy divine love, see, our friends take notice, all nature waits in silence: let, let thy voice be heard by me: quae habitas in hortis, fac me audire vocem tuam." Evidently he cares to hear some sweet word, and there he gets for answer, all in all: flee, my love, like a deer so swift. Now she loves her privations more than his gifts and graces. And so she says: Flee. And thus ends the Song of Songs. For herein lies the fulfilment of all the mysteries of holy love. All the ardours and all the raptures go out in the desire to lose everything. Magdalene, you will possess and embrace the feet of Jesus at the beginning of your love. But as soon as it is necessary to complete it, Jesus will say to you: Touch me no more. This is the course, these are the turns, this is the hard reign of divine love in this time of misery, exile and bondage. Coming is the eternal day when it will be given to us to see, to love, to enjoy and to live in the fullness of times."