Her narrow life has straitened to this room.
Arranged like a saint’s corpse in a reliquary –
Hands clasped
Over her virgin womb –
Her body lies,
Trusting that soon the hand of love will find her.
Blind eyes
Focused on all or nothing.
Her life has known naïve gentility
Only and so one thought that that defined her.
Yet charity
(Her visitors bear witness),
Though she is poor, is in her daily gift –
So call it love.
Blind hands –
Ignorant both of passion and of harm,
Hands she can barely lift –
With gentleness, conferring calm,
Reach out to where my little children stand:
They who, like her, fear nothing,
Doubt no love.