- Far down the stone passageway, a key turns,
- a heavy door is pried open and shoved shut
- as the passageway funnels to our acute ears
- a woman's scream
- reeling high over the deep imprecations of our jailors.
- It is time. They are coming.
- The uncertainty ceases now,
- the not knowing when they will end this.
- .
- We will leave this constant blackness
- that has kept from us the passage of the days and nights,
- the movements of the clouds, of the stars and of our moon.
- We will walk into the light and time will begin again,
- for a little while.
- .
- Another scraping of keys, another cell opened,
- its contents reamed into the corridor, moaning in terror.
- .
- We will leave behind these walls
- that have bruised and chilled us, sister,
- walls that have kept from us
- the grace and beauty of the world,
- walls that have left us only the sounds
- of our own whispers, the feel
- of unyielding stone, rough straw, our own parched skins,
- and of vermin coming to live in these once beautiful rags.
- .
- We will no longer sip the stench-filled air of this place
- but drink deeply the intoxicating scents
- of our Mother's beating sea and blooming herbs.
- She will warm us with Her sun,
- send Her breezes to our faces and through our hair,
- She will send wrens soaring over the courtyard,
- She will flutter the leaves of the poplars that rim the square.
- I will see your face again, sister,
- not with hands that smooth away your tears
- but with eyes that welcome the sight of your goodness.
- Perhaps, perhaps there will also be
- beloved faces in the crowd.
- .
- A closer door, a voice we once heard singing,
- now raised in rage.
- It is answered with the sound of a blow
- and a fierce bellow that roars up out of fear
- far deeper than that which stops our breathing
- as a key enters the lock that has kept us here.
- We will not cower in this darkness,
- hoping they will not see us.
- We will not stay in this hell that they have made.
- .
- We will go now, good sister,
- into the joy of the Mother's glory
- which will reign triumphant all around us
- as these fear-filled demons burn us out of these bodies,
- converting us at last,
- to light.
