Wine in a Cup of Stone – a poem by Maha Salih

Wine in a Cup of Stone

An-oþer tyme ryth as sche cam be a powr womanys hows, þe powr woman clepyd hir in-to hir hows & dede hir sytten be hir lytyl fyer, ȝeuying hir wyn to drynke in a cuppe of ston. 
-The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 39.

1 Margery Kempe Remembers: Lynn, c. 1431

It was a time of taking and giving. 
Alone in Rome, without her husband or her 
money, she lived with the poor: shared sour wine,
begged alms in the streets, lugged firewood back to 
the slum. Once, a woman beckoned her to drink
and rest in a narrow room. She saw in 
that room the world; the Virgin and Child in a
weary servant and her snotty toddler. The cup
was blessed, the place sacred, she says, thinking of
the woman offering a stranger her cup of stone.

2 – a critical interlude – 

Margery saw with her period eye
(see Baxandall, Panofsky) God pulsing
in mundane stuff. But while Campin’s leisured 
Virgins sat satin-wrapped in their parlours,
boxed in with lilies basins firescreens lamps;
Margery made arte povera.
Woman, child, stranger. Wine in a stone cup.  

3: Rome, July 2023

So I walked the Stations of Mrs Kempe;
chased medieval ghosts through Baroqued churches 
in rygth hot wedyr. I logged her places:
where she wept and confessed, where she sought the saints;
the place where God took her by the hand –

and passed unseeing that place where the world
transfigured as she drank a cup of wine. 

Maha Salih teaches and researches medieval English literature at King’s College London and has published several critical studies of The Book of Margery Kempe.