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Gary LeBel

At Eibingen

To hear the women sing
their beloved Abbess's verses,
to hear their breaths inhale
to sound the final cadence
that heralds the silence after . . .

The sky was streaked with orange, its edges burnished darker along the hillsides; the pine trees’ slender boles were lapped with December snow, and it was late and the light was leaving as the hunter took an alternate way home; three pheasants dangled from his right shoulder, his bow and quiver rode his left.

The deep snow’s crust gave way beneath him; his pace was slow and halting, his exhalations pluming round him as his face moved into each new ghost of breath.

         And then in myriad flickers
         through needles clad with tips of ice
         came the pallor of quarried stone. . .
         and women's voices rising
         as through the granite's own

He paused and wiped his forehead of the sweat that dripped from his thick woolen cap whose flaps concealed his ears. Exhausted from the hunt and his long slog home through the trackless snow, he leaned against a towering pine to listen.

Though the hunter could not speak the language in which they sang, he listened gladly as its echoing tones flowed and murmured like brooklets under ice.

When at last the final verse was sounded and its traces faded into the bitter air, the forest seemed to exhale as if it had been holding its breath, the ensuing quiet so thick, he could hear the rub of his woolens, the chafe of his stiffened trousers, the squeak of his calfskin boots. He waited, hoping the abbess and her novices would begin another song so that he could hear it all in full, for he was unafraid of the coming dark, and wanted to linger. Instead, he heard the abbess dismiss her choir in his own crisp tongue, “Gute Nacht, meine Engel! Bis morgen!”

The hunter winced when he thought of the daughter he’d given the abbess to be laid at the feet of God. Had she lived, he’d have been listening for her voice, high and sweet and virginal. . . and he broke into uncontrollable weeping, his tears freezing as they ran down the sides of his unshaven face and

        as if the stone had come alive with bells,
        the air was filled with their somber knells,
        as the sky stole back its paling light,
        enfolding hunter, stone and memory all
        in pleats of gathering night.

He pushed himself from the tree and began the long trudge home; as he did, he vowed he would not speak of stopping to hear the lovely voices, nor of his sadness, for his family’s grief was yet still new.

In memory of Angelee Deodhar

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Notes:

(1) “Gute Nacht, meine Engel! Bis Morgen!” Good night, my angels! Till tomorrow!”

(2) The ‘Abbess’ is a fictional representation of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), an extraordinary woman of great learning and counsel whose sterling advice many kings had sought, and most of all, a composer of world-renowned sacred songs of incomparable pathos and beauty.

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About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.