Voice of the early dawn light

Is at the nape of Ubaldesca’s neck.

Each syllable is certain as the sun.

‘You must go to the sisterly house

Of St John of Jerusalem.’

Without turning she replies,

‘I am as green as young grass.

My parents are poor.

They are away in the fields

And I have no dowry.’

Words of the wind the Messenger speaks

‘The Mothers need virtues more than dowries.’

Ubaldesca looks out through the doorway

To the city on the hill.

‘I have not yet been into my heart

To see if I have virtues.’

Angel’s words come again,

Like a hand through olden corn -

‘The Holy Ghost will supply.

As the clear fresh stream,

No woman in Pisa

Will be more rushing-cool with virtues

Than you.’

So Ubaldesca went to the convent

And found the sisters waiting

With a red gown and black cloak

To make her Christ’s bride.

ii

On the Calvary Day of Suffering

She tends to a woman

Who lies in the archway of death.

‘Water,’ she pleads in a voice of dust.

Ubaldesca fills a cup from the crock.

It is a fresh draft,

Drawn from the well at dawn.

‘Sister, say a blessing over this drink.’

With cool wet fingers Ubaldesca

Etches a cross in the space above the brim.

She lifts the patient’s head and tips

Water to lips that spin in fever

Like sycamore leaves.

‘Wine,’ The woman gasps. ‘This is wine.’

Her thirst is quenched with the deep

Vintage of wonder.

A cup of the simple fired earth

Was long kept as the relic of Ubaldesca.

iii

From the Bridge of the Thorn

Ubaldesca comes bleeding.

A stone has fallen from a high roof.

This, her last wound, taken as a gift.

She lay in the peace of death

While her friend, a Curate of the Holy Sepulchre

Made a vigil of seven nights

Until he saw her rise, as if in a chariot,

To the welkin

Beyond the reach of our days.