Another piece from American poet Louis Simpson (1923-2012), a man whom Seamus Heaney called a ‘touchstone for poetry’. I think this is a slighter piece than his great ballad ‘Carentan O Carentan’ (see week 36), but it shows the same mastery of form and flow.
Mary Magdalene appears in the New Testament as a devoted follower of Jesus. The idea that she was a reformed prostitute seems to have been a later invention, the result of a mistaken identification with another Mary made by Pope Gregory in 591. In 1969 Pope Paul VI backtracked on this identification, acknowledging that Pope Gregory had, well, erred, and in 2016 Pope Francis, perhaps by way of apology, awarded her liturgical memory on the Catholic calendar a free upgrade from ‘memorial’ to ‘feast’, but the idea of her as a classic example of the repentant sinner persists in popular culture and this is what the poem runs with.
The Man Who Married Magdalene
The man who married Magdalene
Had not forgiven her.
God might pardon every sin …
Love is no pardoner.
Her hands were hollow, pale, and blue,
Her mouth like watered wine.
He watched to see if she were true
And waited for a sign.
It was old harlotry, he guessed,
That drained her strength away,
So gladly for the dark she dressed,
So sadly for the day.
Their quarrels made her dull and weak
And soon a man might fit
A penny in the hollow cheek
And never notice it.
At last, as they exhausted slept,
Death granted the divorce,
And nakedly the woman leapt
Upon that narrow horse.
But when he woke and woke alone
He wept and would deny
The loose behavior of the bone
And the immodest thigh.
Louis Simpson
David Sutton 
Hi David, “And nakedly the woman leapt / Upon that narrow horse”. Is Simpson referring to Revelation chapter 6 verse 8? “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him …”?
Yes, I am sure he is. On this note there is an excellent short novel by the American writer Katherine Anne Porter, set in the 1918 influenze epidemic, entitled ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’. And of course let’s not forget the Clint Eastwood western, ‘Pale Rider’. In Pratchett/Gaiman’s ‘Good Omens’ Death turns up on a motorbike, but I suppose you have to move with the times…
Hi David, thanks for your reply. I have a follow-up question. Is “narrow” an indirect reference to life as a (narrow) path (a cliché?)? Or possibly the horse of death is actually “narrow” (=thin/gaunt)?
I don’t know for sure, but I take it to refer to the horse actually being imagined as gaunt, perhaps even skeletal. I note that riders do spake of a ‘narrow horse’ i.e. one that needs a less wide saddle than usual. In the ‘Discworld’ books Death’s horse seems to be of a fairly normal build, but as it is called Binky perhaps Pratchett is not being entirely respectful of traditional iconography.
thank you for the introduction to poet and poem – some lovely lines:
“So gladly for the dark she dressed,
So sadly for the day.”