Monja Blanca by Clive James

Ejoye's note: I read this in the New Yorker a while back. The last two stanzas read like apophatic theology and I have given "bold" to my favorite lines. Herald the dope. Peace and power my people.



The wild White Nun, rarest and loveliest

Of all her kind, takes form in the green shade

Deep in the forest. Streams of filtered light

Are tapped, distilled, and lavishly expressed

As petals. Her sweet hunger is displayed

By the labellum, set for bees in flight

To land on. In her well, the viscin gleams:

Mesmeric nectar, sticky stuff of dreams.



This orchid’s sexual commerce is confined

To flowers of her own class, and nothing less.

And yet for humans she sends so sublime

A sensual signal that it melts the mind.

The hunters brave a poisoned wilderness

To capture just a few blooms at a time,

And even they, least sensitive of men,

Will stand to look, and sigh, and look again,



Dying of love for what does not love them.

Transported to the world, her wiles inspire

The same frustration in rich connoisseurs

Who pay the price for nourishing the stem

To keep the bloom fresh, as if their desire

To live forever lived again through hers:

But in a day she fades, though every fold

Be duplicated in fine shades of gold.



Only where she was born, and only for

One creature, will she give up everything

Simply because she is adored; and he

Must sacrifice himself. The Minotaur,

Ugly, exhausted, has no gifts to bring

Except his grief. She opens utterly

To show how she can match his tears of pain.

He drinks her in, and she him, like the rain.



He sees her, then, at her most beautiful,

And he would say so, could she give him speech:

But he must end his life there, near his prize,

Having been chosen, half man and half bull,

To find the heaven that we never reach

Though seeking it forever. Nothing buys

Or keeps a revelation that was meant

For eyes not ours and once seen is soon spent:



For all our sakes she should be left alone,

Guarded by legends of how men went mad

Merely from tasting her, of monsters who

Died from her kiss. May this forbidden zone


Be drawn for all time. If she ever had


A hope to live, it lies in what we do


To curb the longing she arouses. Let


Her be. We are not ready for her yet,






Because we have a mind to make her ours,


And she belongs to nobody’s idea


Of the sublime but hers. But that we know,

Or would, if it were not among her powers

Always across the miles to bring us near

To where she thrives on shadows. By her glow

We measure darkness; by her splendor, all

That is to come, or gone beyond recall.