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WARD KELLY
In the Fulfilling Fires
All you ever wanted, it seems clear
within the flames, was to fulfill
a sacred mission, a certain foresight
that oppressed itself on your youth . . .
and it was not the war, not the freedom
from marriage and maternal duties, not
the mysteries of fame or royalty or
priests so unlike your own back home,
not any of these who allured, but only
the force within your chest pushing,
pushing to fulfill, always onward
to fulfill a duty always just out
of reach . . . it did not arrive at your
hands until the flames did, and now
you see, the fires bring a certain
clarity, of that which cannot be
uttered onto man or woman, for
it is of forgiveness you would speak,
yet there are no words to pronounce
these wrongs done to you, none,
no imperfect words, but only flames
will do, only fires dancing on your
beauteous face can talk of the forgiving,
by a fearless girl, of a race of mortal souls
who seek to slay their very own saints.
NOTE: Joan of Arc (1412-1431) earned, in the words of Louis Kossuth, an imposing distinction: since the writing of human history began, she is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen. Although she achieved many victories for her beloved Dauphin, by age nineteen she had been tried for heresy, then burned at the stake. She was also the only person in history ever canonized as a saint of the Catholic church who had once been executed as a heretic by the very same church.
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