In Ephesus, standing somewhere between the hovel where Mary supposedly had spent her final years and the remains of the temple to Diana, the idea came to me of a dialogue with God in which Mary, seeing Diana’s temple in the distance, may have expressed some misgivings about her life.
In my account Mary, perhaps foreseeing Frida Kahlo in a dream, has changed her appearances considerably, perhaps to look like Frida, in the spirit of the pagan heat and marshes surrounding her. God rebukes her sharply... Who is right? _________
Lady steps over clover one day, from her home, granted her prayer— Ave Matuta!—to turn into Frida from cold Mary of Ephesus: and to dignify it, saying, "Release me, God, from all yr gabfest, & if not, sensing the threat of dust that turns wet, then word the real sex of me straight to Olympia, with my one bare breast, cypress rouge, gaunt chin
No more the swelling angel seed for me! No more that hovel instead of alabaster, the virgin's coarse sage while I see there real marshy heat rise up round Dian’s ankles, by the harbour walls— a temple in place of huts! Leave me my bare head, half-chignon that's been clawed back hatefully by you, hoping to kill this need to compete in games It's better than not letting the sun fill shadowy gaps, between lips & nose, and as I'm still young, between my two real thighs!" Arresting spite of a father's now sounds in her ear, her tight sutured ear: God to Frida now, "¿Dónde está mi duende? Mother of Lesbos! Now I find you facing temples, wide- browed, obstinate, trading good stone for my salty bogs
My skin-and-bones girl with plum-coloured nip, lest we part like this, eyes locking, take the path of a femur road to love's shining vacuity;
& bleed for it, with one sorrowing eye, and arrive there the blue-ringed girl, after some trial, as if you got tired of my Hebron skies Faithless, so-so girl, staring staring at her lips, hold your side awhile, gnashed by yr own finny hand.
Lumpy, self-evolving, blushing girl: hold both bloody sides & keep yr hand away from me! Goat-like chins always crush into salt" New Ephesian groves scarf her anew but as a madonna's falling chiton manages only a little dampness, it does stop some of the bleeding
A sea-urchin grows at her neck, with a half-formed nimbus shell to tell the old Mary from Frida