What do you feel, Mary? What runs through
Your mind when an unclean spirit leaves,
When a demon abandons its hold on a man?
The void is more potent
Than the power which flees
You know this to be true, don’t you? True for you?
You have been healed more than once.
The first demon went out, seven returned.
More of your own evil
Self will never suffice
What were the seven cast out from you, Mary?
Do you know? What were your many torments?
Tell us, can you name them one by one?
I know them not, but these
Seven I should never desire
One that speaks from the place of darkness
One indifferent to words of the wise
One too proud to confess and repent
One consumed with proof and doubt
One that mistrusts the good it sees
One that sooner divides than unites
Or prefers an ordered void to a holy mess
Like mine.
Peter’s reflection on traveling with Mary Magdelene in the context of demonic exorcisms and healings, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and an “evil and adulterous generation.” See Luke 8 and Matthew 12. “Interview with a Demoniac,” if you will.