Mother of God

O Mother of God—
not the marble woman of the basilicas,
not the pious dream men kneel before in candlelight,
but You, the dark, molten, breathing Mother—
You whose body is the living globe,
whose blood is the running sea,
whose breath steams in the mouths of beasts and men,
whose womb burns under every seed that grows!

You who before all priests and prophets
uttered the first word in the long black night—
and that word was Be!
And lo, fire leapt,
and the sea turned in its sleep,
and the stones began their slow, mineral prayer—
and the first sap moved like thought through the stalk of darkness,
and the first bird broke its egg with a cry.

O Mother, You were before all gods,
before the Christ of pain, before the Christ of reason,
before the iron cross and the iron wheel—
for You are the cross of all crossing,
the wheel of all whirling,
the first heart that beats behind every death and resurrection!
And the true Son that comes from You is not nailed upon wood,
but rises each dawn out of the sea’s phosphorescent wound,
glittering and renewed,
the solar body of the world forever born again from Your darkness.

Mother of God—
how we have fled from You!
We have fled into the white glare of reason,
into the sterile whirr of the Machine;
we have fled from the living breast to the iron nipple,
from the warm milk of Your veins to the cold oil of industry.
And now our hearts throb with a false rhythm,
a rhythm not of blood, but of belts and gears—
the counterfeit heartbeat of the Machine,
which men have made and called it progress!

But beneath the concrete Your pulse still moves,
slow, implacable,
invisible as magma under the crust of the dead city.
Beneath the towers of glass and the electric veins of power
Your sap still rises,
Your invisible milk still nourishes the roots,
Your great dark breasts still heave in their sleep.
Even now, though the world has forgotten You,
You remember the world.
You wait.
You brood in silence.
You bide Your time.

O Mother,
not chaste, but terrible,
not merciful, but just—
when You turn in Your sleep, mountains are born,
and when You sigh, forests fall,
and when You wake fully, the oceans rise in rebellion!
For You are the pulse of renewal,
the dark necessity beneath all creation.
Even death is Your servant,
for he gathers back to You the dust that longs for birth again.

Teach us, O Mother,
to live and die as You live and die:
without fear, without resistance,
with the stillness of the seed that accepts its burial
knowing it shall be green flame once more.
Teach us to abandon the sterile light,
the electric glare of knowledge,
and sink again into the warm black earth of not-knowing,
where all true knowledge begins—
not in the head, but in the belly of the world!

O Mother of God,
not the sterile Madonna,
but the dark wet body of creation,
with your hair tangled in rivers,
your breath a mist among trees,
your eyes the twin abysses of birth and death—
come forth again, come forth!
Come walking through the machine-cities,
come breaking the glass spines of the towers,
come with your feet of lightning and your hands of loam,
and call your children home!

Call us back, O Mother—
we who have forgotten how to kneel to anything living.
Call us back to the sacrament of the soil,
to the black bread of existence,
to the trembling silence of roots in the dark.
Let us feel again the sap within our bones,
the sun like molten gold flowing through our nerves.
Let us be creatures again—
not thinkers, not workers, not users,
but creatures—
warm, animal, alive!

For the Machine is our crucifixion,
and You are the Resurrection.
Your breath alone can blow the ashes of our cities into blossom.
Your eyes alone can bear the full beauty of the world without turning blind.
Your womb alone can contain both the serpent and the dove,
the fire and the dew,
the living and the dead in one eternal pulse.

O Mother,
I would be nothing but Your cry—
Your long, low, unending moan of life becoming life again.
I would dissolve into Your body,
become flame in Your blood,
stone in Your sleep,
seed in Your endless dark.
Let me perish into You,
for in perishing into You I shall live—
as all things live, in the round, endless circle of Your being.

O Mother of God,
I see You rising—
not as the pale Virgin,
but as the black, radiant Earth,
naked and terrible and beautiful beyond all salvation.
You rise out of the molten horizon,
out of the last rusting ruins of the Machine,
and the serpents twine around Your arms,
and the phoenix screams in the arc of Your hair,
and the sun bursts from Your breast like blood from a wound.

You rise,
and all the dead awaken;
the stones breathe;
the buried forests lift their green heads from the tomb;
the rivers reverse their flow, singing back to the sea.
And all the earth burns with the terrible joy of rebirth—
not of man,
but of Life itself,
Life unbounded, Life unrepentant, Life divine.

Then I will kneel in the dust that is You,
and whisper with the last of my breath:

Blessed be the Mother of all gods, and of none.

Blessed be the death that is no death, but renewal.

Blessed be the fire that burns us back into being.

Blessed be the Earth, the dark, living God!