Intercession Nineteen
by Emily Isaacson
The virgins of Luberon held vigil
in the fields where they had played as children,
where the edge of the moon is gold-bitten.
Fields of lavender, fragrant in the mail
of lovers, ethereal becomes coarse,
winter-dry, blooms left to faded purple
as opaque candles of a cathedral
dared flame into the open, a long mass
in December re-welcomed the waiting
who had stood outside, presidents in love,
to lotus princes, austere as priests’ hands.
Frankincense rose from the ground—of late—
they had walked on, in sapphire days’ alcoves
lit by lights, the rose windows to far lands.
Summary of Poem
“Intercession Nineteen” occupies a liminal space within The Intercessions, where geography, memory, and liturgy converge. Set in the Luberon, the poem opens not inside stone walls but in open fields—lavender plains once associated with childhood play and pastoral innocence. This choice immediately widens the cathedral’s symbolic reach beyond Paris, suggesting that sacred vigil is not confined to architecture but is carried in the land itself. The virgins of Luberon function less as literal figures than as archetypal witnesses, embodiments of continuity, purity, and remembrance, holding vigil where time has layered innocence with loss. Nature here becomes an extension of worship, its seasonal decay mirroring the spiritual ache left in the wake of the Notre-Dame fire.
The poem’s sensory language moves deliberately from softness to austerity. Lavender, first “fragrant in the mail / of lovers,” shifts toward winter-dry coarseness, its faded purple echoing the extinguished blooms of grief. This tonal shift parallels the movement from open fields into ecclesial ritual, as the imagery of “opaque candles” and a December mass introduces formal liturgy. The vigil widens: those “re-welcomed” include figures of power and devotion alike—presidents, princes, priests—collapsing hierarchy into a shared posture of waiting. In this way, Isaacson renders grief democratic, suggesting that catastrophe draws disparate lives into a single act of intercession, illuminated by flame rather than authority.
Formally, the poem adheres to the Petrarchan sonnet tradition that structures The Intercessions, with a clear volta occurring as incense—“Frankincense rose from the ground”—lifts the poem from earthbound procession toward transcendence. The turn is subtle yet profound: what was walked upon becomes that which ascends. The closing tercet’s vision of “rose windows to far lands” completes this ascent, fusing cathedral iconography with spiritual pilgrimage. The rose window, emblematic of Notre-Dame Cathedral, becomes not merely architectural but eschatological—light refracted outward, reaching beyond geography, beyond loss.
Within the larger arc of The Intercessions, “Intercession Nineteen” functions as a moment of outward breath after prolonged lament. Positioned late in the sequence, it gestures toward restoration without denying absence. The cathedral is no longer only a wounded body but a lens through which land, ritual, and human memory are re-consecrated. By situating vigil in Provence rather than Paris, Isaacson suggests that Notre Dame’s burning has altered the spiritual imagination far beyond its walls. The poem thus stands as a quiet testament to shared sacred responsibility: that remembrance itself—held in fields, seasons, and song—becomes an act of rebuilding.
Book: The Intercesssions by W.E. Isaacson
In The Intercessions, Winter gathers prayers from the ashes of Notre Dame and binds them into sonnets that stand as vigil candles against the dark. This sacred cycle of poems weaves ruin with hope, memory with mercy, and lament with the quiet resolve to rebuild what fire could not consume. Rooted in real history yet alive with devotion, these verses speak as priest and pilgrim, guiding the reader through stone corridors and vaulted prayers into a gentle resurrection of faith. The Madonna of the Streets appears in quiet corners, her hidden face a reminder that mercy often walks unseen among the forgotten. Wildflowers sprout from ashes, olive groves stand watch over old scars, and relics of thorns and timber carry whispers of the Passion into a modern age of flame and fragile hope.
The Intercessions is more than a book of poems; it is a vigil in your hands — an invitation to stand watch over the ruins of faith, culture, and heart, and to believe that light still flickers in the embers. Each sonnet turns prayer into art, each stanza bends like a ribbed vault to lift the reader’s gaze higher, asking us to remember that the true cathedral is not only built of stone but of living hearts who dared to intercede. For all who stand among the broken beams — whether of ancient cathedrals or their own inner sanctuaries — these pages offer a psalm for the restless, a hymn for the hidden, and a quiet benediction for the faithful who keep singing when the world falls silent. From riverbanks and relics to the final whispered hymn, The Intercessions calls us to kneel among the ashes and rise singing, a chorus of watchmen keeping vigil for dawn.
