Anne Markham Bailey visited the Anchorhold of All Saints Church in 2008.  Her intention was to visit the sites of anchoritic enclosure, to experience the place, the spirituality,  and to use that experience to inspire her writing.  Her work, ‘Cold Stone, White Lily’,  are the thoughts and reminiscences of an unidentified fourteenth century English Anchoress, Anne Wyngfield,  whom she decided to ‘place’ in the anchorhold of the ancient parish church of All Saints’, South Lynn (King’s Lynn), of which she writes ....

Before I travelled to King’s Lynn, I looked at photos of All Saint’s Church and anchor hold. One’s experience deepens enormously when one crosses stone, hears rain, and sees the candle flicker in shadows on the straw covering the floor. In the hold at All Saints’ Church, I was exactly where anchoresses prayed hundreds of years ago when the world was both very different and very much the same.

The following words describe Anne’s life .... moving us from reality to experience ...

Censing Angels

Why did I marry spirit,

promise my years to stones

where fungi and spiders stretch?

The chalice is filled.

The host is lifted and offered.

Censing angels beat wings;

veils of smoke cross the altar.

The Holy Ghost surrounds the Father.

Mother Mary sits quiet,

her plump son on her lap.

I kneel at the unseen window

of the suspirating cell,

a jawbone in a silver box

on my altar of shifting light.

My people suffer so.

The priest chants

bungled Latin.

Censing angels swirl

in the air; their incense pots sparkle.

My faith is re-born

in wings of smoke and stone.

White Lily

From the mounded snow

she pushes green-bodied,

hungry for spring sky.

She reaches thin-veined arms,

trailing draping fingers

in the blood of Christ,

and mourns a mother’s loss.

She rides the sunny arc of day,

dreams the lift and drop

of moon-bleached stone

touching the boundary of her bed.

Her buds swell.

Blood

A mix of nettles, the ash of roses,

and a little red wine calmed

the vigorous flow of blood

flagrant in the anchor hold.

From prayers on high

to the flood down low,

woman is not evil

or soiled

or born of sin.

Blood is the sacrifice.

The world is reborn

year after year,

slippery skinned babies

suckling like drunks

as I suckle at the breast of Christ.

Cold

In the arms of my Lord

I wake, sing prayers

in the dark,

burn in love

on a night so cold,

an embrace of snow

round singing stone.

Pilgrims

I heard the jangling and calling,

the stamping and wrangling,

long before I saw the pilgrims,

passing the fields I roamed as a girl,

grassy scents like gold to me.

On their way to Walsingham

to the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin,

they stopped at Lynn to rest and eat

and care for the sick.

They camped in the churchyard

Out-side my hold and came to the window.

Anchoress Anne, Anchoress Anne!

A murmur began

in the line of folk,

various and sundry,

gems strung together

to be cleansed in Mary’s grace.

I looked at the

plucked foreheads,

and the bent tonsures.

I heard a visionary howl.

A barefoot man stooped,

pocked with sin.

A baby slept slung

to the chest of a young mother.

Please pray for us, they asked,

and I did. I do.

When the pilgrims settled down

in the yard around the church,

the brothers of Black Friars

bustled around them, unspeaking.

I closed the black cloth,

bowed down before my Lord,

tears of his blood in my heart.

May my people be lifted,

like pearls tossed high

or diamonds in gold crowns.

The sweet grass under my body

is an open field.

I laugh with outstretched arms

as Father scoops me up,

puts me on his shoulder,

takes me home.

Matins

In a small walled garden,

peony and ginger,

gromwell and gillyflower

burst under the sun,

inviting me to scent and shine.

I am on my knees on a cold floor.

I enter the arbor like a warm kitchen

or two bodies fitted together.

Mother Mary stands-

The blue cloth of her gown

dark in the folds,

her face framed in white,

her eyes soft, holding me,

her hands open as questions.

I am on my knees on a cold floor.

Around the wall,

wild geranium, meadow cress,

and morning glory sing to Mary.

Lifting their bloom

and sharpening their color,

they press their fragrance

that she should be pleased.

The mound of roses

curls and sparkles

as Mother brings me home.

Wool Gown

This wool gown

is like sheep in fields

of morning sun.

They shake their ears,

drop their heads,

pull soft grass,

silver and wet,

from the sleeping ground.

Where I climbed,

the hawks cried

above the high twisted oak.

My pocket full of book,

I lay along the thick branch,

reached for the Psalter,

the smooth cover supple

with eager turning.

The leaves fell open

Mary is afraid.

Gabriel whispers in her ear.

Her face is pale but shines

from the news.

Logos is living in the oak.

I leave the window and the mass,

full of the Host.

I am a guest in this space.

Wool kisses my thin ankles

sheathed in linen.

Leaving the Window

The lilies bowed

at the feet of the

freting mother.

Golden stamens,

long thick stalks bended to her.

She wrapped around

her fevered bundle,

his eyes too bright.

The lilies nuzzled her dress

as she patted and sang;

her elbow cradled his head,

his cheeks too red.

His mother willed

him to be well,

to run about her skirts,

playing with sticks for the fire.

She offered the child.

I lifted him into the hold.

Her sore eyes

counted fruitless harvests,

reckoned levelling cold,

her husband’s sharp slaps

and dry mountings.

You’ll tend him, she said.

She pulled the hood

around her face, turning back.

I nodded with the lilies,

left the window with the boy,

and rocked in the damp scent

of bodies in linen and wool,

sweet-grass underfoot.

I brewed St. John’s Wort

plucked wild on Midsummer’s Eve,

mixed in honey,

and let it cool.

As he drank,

I knelt silent in

the union of gnosis,

dropped lonely pearls on stone,

holding the sleeping boy.

I prayed for mother and son,

Blessed Virgin, heal us.

I held the throated tune of the lily,

the fragrant surety of open heart.

Flint

Crosses line the church

in grey and yellow and red,

flint knapped in circles

of men who share stories

as they work, slapping the stone

with their hammers.

The yard around the church

crunches thick from years

of building and repair.

On my way to the anchor hold

after the Last Rites,

I picked up a piece

and put it in my pocket.

It is now on my altar,

the outside rough,

the inside secret,

smooth and milky,

a frozen sea.

Winter

In February, the sun is weak.

Snow gloves the hold.

I wear all my clothes day and night,

my cloak as well,

and drink hot broth.

At the grey altar I call my Lord.

Heat this freezing woman, Lord,

with the heated arms of your passion.

Heat my soul with faith

so hot that cold and wind don’t sting.

Forehead on my clasped, numb hands,

legs needled from kneeling,

shivers running up and down

the length of me,

tears in my eyes,

heart punctured and open.

Father, your son hung naked on the cross

for love of me and had no regrets.

Father, teach me such love

to heat and succor this cold, weeping world.

I called to my Father,

His Son before me

on the blood-soaked ground,

head hung upon his chest,

spikes driven through hands and feet,

flesh ragged and torn beneath his weight

upon the cross, all alone, for me.

A wall of fire rose up behind him,

and in my belly, and in my cheeks

the fire lifted, roared behind

my suffering Christ,

naked hung for love,

no snow or cold to damp the flame,

as when I was a girl,

held in the burning arms of God.

Blazing

Stone darkens

after blazing;

I lie the length of flame,

the length of my frame,

not seeking the cool

white of the lily but blazing,

limpid on the slate floor.

I touch the walls;

my cheeks burn.

The blessed belly of my heat

calls for release,

calls for my Saviour.

......................

They took Sawtre* two years ago

from Lynn and locked him up.

I slipped him an embroidered cloth

to feed his courage,

a threaded lion sleeping with one

open eye; like Jesus crucified,

the flesh dies but spirit lives.

Sawtre burned in March.

After nineteen days of torture

in a cell not built for human life,

like mine is, where I control the door,

he took back his word.

Burn me instead, I sang.

If I were in that square,

roped upon the pole,

flame leaping at my feet

like foaming dogs in a pack,

I would be curled

deep in the night,

in a cold stone cell,

in a barley field in summer

or astride my muscled husband.

My Lord’s call is flame.

I am old and dry.

I ignite in a rush,

kiss my Lord,

and fly.

*a priest from St. Margaret’s Church , King’s Lynn.

Anne may be contacted through her website www.annemarkhambailey.com. ; PLEASE, ask her permission before any of her work is either copied or reproduced in any way.  We hope, sincerely, that she will return to England in 2010 to read her poems in the very place she chose to incarnate Anne Wyngfield – ‘our anchoress’, of someone else’s making........