Our Lady Duse
To the memory of Uta Hagen

We remember her as from a dream
when, in La Dame Aux Camélias
she, by an imperceptible movement
of the hand, caused her flower to die
of Marguerite’s grief:
Touched by frost, her leaves sighed
for the crying of the wind
that pinched her blossom white
and flung it into the winter night.
Duse loved a poet,
a lesser soul than she,
so enamored of his own
he nourished it on hers,
drained it in a poem and fell asleep
on tour in the frozen Midwest,
let her wait alone
on some windy corner after the show.
She bowed to the silence,
obeyed his absence,
and walked briskly home,
where healthy grief bore fruit,
taught within her living root
bliss to bless and cheek to turn
in striking purity that week
Marguerite petal by petal blew
the flower of her lord
delicately down to death.
When the devil stormed in her,
they say she stepped on him.

ISBN 1-59661-010-7
28 pages $9
“One of our most mystical of poets, Carol Hebald’s work burns with intensity fired by myth and Biblical mysteries, reminding us that we cannot suppress or escape the power of song crying out from dreams and the poet’s iconic avatars.” —David Ray, author of One Thousand Years: Poems About the Holocaust

“Carol Hebald’s poems, both beautiful and strong, display her mastery of a new form which I call ‘strict wildness.’ Never have I encountered a more fantastic imagination combined with a more rigorous sense of formal control.” —Peter Viereck, author of Tide and Continuities

“Hebald’s poems are like jewels on fire—cool and precisely cut at first glance, then blazing with mystery and sparkle of awe when touched on closer reading. Her work insists on the sharing of personal revelation, which in turn leads the reader into her world of passionate and profound inquiry.” —Martin Tucker, editor of Confrontation