Martha's Prayer

“The people asked Martha for help, and she went after the dragon. She found him in the forest in the act of devouring a man, sprinkled him with blessed water, and had a cross held up in front of him. The brute was subdued at once and stood still like a sheep while Martha tied him up with her girdle, and the people killed him then and there with stones and lances….

“As the hour of her death drew near,… she prayed in the following words: “My dear Guest, take care of your poor little servant, and, as you deigned to accept my hospitality, receive me now into your heavenly dwelling!””

--Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, ch. 105 “Saint Martha”

When I have bid farewell to flour and flagons
and sought at last to sit down at your feet;
when all is done and I have slain my dragons
and given up all thought of bread or meat,
then will you come to me and bid me eat?
You came to seek the lost, but what of stragglers?

For long ago, good Lord, at my poor table
I gave you bread and wine, the best I had,
and meant to serve as well as I was able—
but Mary wouldn’t help, and I got mad
because I couldn’t rest and she just sat,
like we were characters in some old fable.

Then you rebuked me—I have not forgotten:
All my best efforts live in infamy,
my work invoked as something slightly rotten.
I’ve tried to change since last you looked on me,
but my attempts all spring up fruitlessly
and wither, so no harvest have I gotten.

Your words are seeds: I plant them in my memory
but never is there grain in the golden ears,
for there’s a dragon nestled here within me.
I douse his flaming with a flood of tears
each time his fire destroys the work of years,
but still he drives me—Victor Lord, come win me!

For all the loaves I’ve baked can’t sate his hunger
and all the dishes cooked can’t calm his flame,
and who will have me in the end, I wonder?
Which one, of you or him, has greater claim?
If it be he, O Christ, yet for your name
pry up the dragon’s claw that I lie under.

Bless me, O Lord, though still I haven’t rested
or found the better part since you’ve been gone.
The dragon prowls; I fail when I am tested;
and all the many cares go on and on,
but you have promised me a Sabbath dawn:
Oh, be my host at last, and I your guest there.  Amen.

Taming the Tarasque, from Hours of Henry VIII, Photo By Graham S. Haber - https://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/images/shop/stmartha.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71099105