Wet clothes draped the faces
of the dying, the near dead—
murder in the hands of a woman
trained for childbirth,
wounds recovered from.
Bubers knotted below the skin.
demon fists knuckling to air
slowly killed the body first
in black and green stages,
the soul last.
The end was noisy but quick
enough, a gift most gladly
received in those days when
the death carts creaked
in the muddy lane.
No priest worth more than
ten pounds ever knocked
on a door marked with
a red cross, passed his days
with country patrons.
She was priest and doctor,
heard their last confessions,
sins of the flesh as if the flesh
weren’t punishment enough
in the best weeks of summer.
And if she died herself,
the victim of her victims,
she was one more splayed corpse
in a common pit outside
the city walls.
The black riddle was stranger
than fleas on rats–plagues lived
and died, murder was mercy
in her trembling hands,
an airless bedroom.