The Receipts She Kept in Latin (Hildegard von Bingen)"

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You were three years old
and the light
had a taste.
It tasted
like the color
a struck bell makes
in a cold room
when no one
is listening
and you told
your nurse
that the light
had a taste
and your nurse
told your parents
and your parents
gave you
to a convent
because a girl
whose light
has a taste
is either
a saint
or a problem
and the convent
handled both.

[Verse 2]
You composed
seventy-seven songs
and an opera
in a century
that did not know
what an opera was
and you wrote
a book
about the medicinal uses
of every plant
in the Rhineland
and you wrote
a book
about the nature
of the universe
and you invented
a language
nobody asked for
and the language
had the sticky amber weight
of a thing
that needed to exist
before
anyone knew
it was missing.

[Chorus]
The visions
came in migraines.
The migraines
came in light.
The light
came in colors
that did not correspond
to the colors
the rest of the century
was seeing
and the occipital cortex
of a woman
whose migraines
carry extra information
is running
a private screening
in a dark theater
and the audience
is one
and the film
is not optional.

[Verse 3]
You wrote
to popes.
You wrote
to emperors.
You told them
what God
had shown you
in the private screening
and they listened
because a nun
with a migraine
is easy to dismiss
and a nun
with a migraine
who also
runs an abbey
and composes operas
and invents languages
and knows
which plant
cures which fever
is not.

[Outro]
Nine hundred years later
your music
sounds
like what music
would sound like
if music
had never
needed
to apologize
for being strange,
and the migraines
are still delivering
the film
to the dark theater
in the occipital cortex
of every person
alive tonight
who sees
the extra colors
and does not
yet know
what to do
with the screening.

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