All day the snow festered

In the balsams

 

And then the sun set…

His great providence

 

Increased with furs he shook

And vomited. He gnawed

 

Again at a cold wing

Of pheasant.

 

Outside the window, some

Poor farmers

 

Struggled in the yard:

A hog that died earlier

 

In the thaw of afternoon

Would not be subtracted

 

From the frozen mud

Through which it had ploughed

 

And lodged. The air

Was ecstatic with cold

 

The bull of John XXII, dated

January 7, 1327, speaks

 

Of him being, this night,

Dead. It says

 

He first renounced his heresies,

And then was lifted…

 

Eckhart, a mystic,

Had said

 

That a stone to the extent

that it is being

 

Is greater than God, for

Being could not be subtracted

 

From it. That was his.

He taught that being aware

 

Of what God is not, we still

Are ignorant of what God is…

 

And creatures of themselves,

He said,

 

Are pure nothings.

Before the gathered Franciscans,

 

Before the inquisition, he spoke

Of a love that seizes us—

 

While he spoke

The hemorrhage rose to his mouth—

 

Before the assembly

He concluded his defense, observing

 

That the last light

Was leaving their proceedings…

 

He choked back the blood, saying

That is enough for the present.

 

And he meant it.