I
Bernard of Quintavalle to His Lady Poverty

To my poor mother, and her poor mother
before her yet more poor, and hers,
most excellent in want, and to all
who lacked before us I pray now
for the gift of graceful hungering,
to have dearth as a rich man's table meats,
   to dwell in penury abundant.

I say to my companions, look over winter.
Hazel shrub is more miserable than we:
fruitless, leafless, naked to the snow.
Dare we break her poor self
for fire to warm us?
"Yes," they answer, unmoved. Too rich yet.
   I say to them, "rather let us

take off our coats, invite gale against us.
Let us peel our shirts to lie down
with the rocks and sleet.
Give such glory to the flesh
as to wear our little skins for fire and roof."
This Saint Hazel taught us.
   This we hoard for riches.

I ask my companions dare we
pitch camp in sight of a rich man's house?
"Yes," they answer, "having come so far."
Come then, I tell them, farther.
This is the man who feeds his beggars
lessons and fills the empty cup
   with exhortation.

This is the man who cannot kneel
around his belly and who prays
to the Virgin with breakfast on his breath.
Light through his windows on the snow
falls rose and jonquil.
We will not rest here. Holily
   we eat our hunger, drink the frozen road.

I say to my companions, "we are not poor enough."
An old owl bears less,
ascends more near to heaven.
Too rich.
Were hell a river we would drop.
Were heaven an island in a stream, we'd sink
   and leave our fine hats floating.

I tell my companions we have no song
plain, no cold shank bare,
no prospect bleak enough.
Rich men tempt and gift us,
thinking there must be some trick.
Give them all that they can carry.
   When our eyes stare out with famine

they'll decide they want no more.
As they puff laden down the road,
think of bridges only light and bird pass over.
We must go that way.
We are rich yet.
On the day we wake and think ourselves alone,
   we shall be almost poor enough.

O Lady Poverty, I am fat among your swains.
I sing to you as soft-eyed men
to their loves all sweetly on a summer day.
If I cannot be the briar, I shall be the rose.
If no beggar, then the lord of worlds.
If not the very desert,
   then some paradise a fool

might wander in and think God made.
I say to my companions,
"keep nothing but desire,"
So she who worlds and fountains in desire
might welcome us, bare as any hazel
she would dress with white,
   light as a bird to whom her hands are open.

Read more of The St. Francis Poems
II & III