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E. Peregrine

Hildegard in Trans-Lation: Antiphon & Response
on O quam mirabilis

ISSUE 9
RASHA ABDULHADI
MONCHO OLLIN ALVARADO
JODY CHAN
SALOMÉ HONÓRIO
NAWA ALVIAR HORTON
MERCY MICHAUD
THEO MOON
E. PEREGRINE

Detail from Hildegard von Bingen’s
Book of Divine Works, Part 1, Vision 2: The Cosmic Spheres and Human Being.1230 AD.
O quam mirabilis // antiphon for the Creator



O quam mirabilis est 



 prescientia divini pectoris


 que prescivit omnem creaturam.


 Nam cum Deus inspexit 


 faciem hominis quem formavit,


 omnia opera sua in eadem forma hominis



 integra aspexit. 



 O quam mirabilis est 



 inspiratio que hominem sic suscitavit.


– St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
​



            wonderful
O how miraculous is 
            marvelous

                           chest
the foreknowing heart of the divine
                           breast 

which foreknew all creation.

                        inspected
For when God looked upon
                        contemplated

the face of the human [they] had formed,

                          in the form of that person
all [their] works 
                          in that form of Person

            beheld      complete
[they]                    whole.
             saw           fresh

            wonderful               
O how miraculous is 
            marvelous            

       breath
the               which kindled human life.
        spirit



O quam mirabilis // response


O how miraculous is that Divine Chest which
knew,
which
knew itself
before it arose out of its own flesh.

Like as a riverbank erosion memory-prophecy
like as a landslide just-add-water no-roots-left
my soul yearns for You
my soul
yearns

Velum templi scissum est, et omnis terra tremuit
(The veil of the temple was rent
and all the earth trembled.)
Seismic trans-substantiation,
tomb-crumbling waking-dead-revelation
two rifts in the topographica mundana, magma-mother-monster
tephratic trumpets refracting refiner’s-fire
pyroclastic phoenix
obsidian knife
obsidian mirror

a glass,
darkly

and then face to face:

faciem hominis.

For when They looked down onto the landscape of skin
formed at last in
Their image,

They saw
Themself
whole.

From the earth arises the clay
from the clay arises the form
from the form arises the reflection:
integra aspexit.

O how miraculous is the gasp
at that moment when knowing becomes sight.

E. Peregrine (they/them) is a trans/nonbinary conductor, poet, musicologist, multidisciplinary artist, and recovering academic based simultaneously in California and the Northeast. Their work across genres explores the fruitful, feral spaces at the overlap of cultural dichotomies: old and new, sacred and secular, hidden and revealed. They can be found on Instagram at @tonus.peregrinus or at erikperegrine.com.