Our Black Madonna Gwyn McVay Our Black Madonna of Czestochowa, a four-foot chamber, three feet of water. Oil is the weeping of the fingers. Nine men, three days. Translucency, indifference of a flood, the cheek of Your mine. Only change the grinding to the song of traffic, murmur their mutters down to cabbage frying, cut off the hair of the mountain.           I was wounded three quarters of a century           before my birth. Drill down, Lady,           where drill bits cannot, lower old Oscar's           tin pail, lower lamplight, all for the soft smeary gold to blacken Your face with. As we worship You, Lady, as a terrible mountain, we worship Your rock by diving deeper than sensible man would crawl, for a living. We bring home your coal to eat. You hold the glove of the falconer. Call the crew home, one way or another, let the long shift be over, let every man's shadow come up, desperation be buried.

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