The Last Letter of Joan of Arc

Sean Beckett

III.

The third time they burned her
was more
successful.

Organs disappeared
as they should.

Bones cracked
and collapsed.

She: ash
indistinguishable from
all ash.

March 22, 1429

I am sent here by God, the King of Heaven,
body for body, to drive you out of all France…
in whatever place we find you, we shall strike therein
and make so great a tumult that none so great has been in France
for a thousand years…

II.

The second time they burned her,
her skin
at last split,
fat sizzling beneath it.
Her body contracting, shrinking
as objects should
under combustion.

But not all of her surrendered.
Her intestines and lungs stayed intact.
And her heart. That awkward, nineteen-
year-old half-pound fist of flesh. Out of
place in the rest of her remains
as it lay on a halo of ash.

April 30, 1429

My Lord commands you to go back to your own land;
for it’s His will, or otherwise I will cause such a disaster for you...

I.

The first time they burned her,
Joan died.
Smoke coaxed its way into her nostrils,
crept down her larynx
laid siege to her lungs,
consumed the prayers on her breath.

May 5, 1429

...the King of Heaven orders and notifies you through me, Joan the Maiden,
to leave your fortresses and go back to your own country;
or I will produce a clash of arms to be eternally remembered.
And this is the third and last time I have written to you. I shall not write anything further.
[signed]
Jesus, Mary; Joan the Maiden

But even after Joan had left
her body stayed,
a fortress the flames could not persuade
to open.
Only her feet charred
and the tips
of her fingers.

Just minutes before,
she had forgiven them,
praised God and saints,
called, Jesus, Jesus
and perished.
Those were supposed to be
her last words.

But the unredacted sentence of
her body remained,
a stain that would not wash away.
Her body a naked paragraph.
Her body an unrepentant sermon.
Her body a last letter.

They each read it differently,
her enemies weeping
now, each in the crowd
mouthing the letter sounds of her mute
corpse as it spoke from
the outskirts of death.

One crippled man read her huddled corpse
as the first song sung over his cradle.
An infant saw her destiny sketched plainly
in Joan’s parched hair.
Some whispered the words of their sins
stitched firmly in her thin frame.

Her body was a prophecy.
So they burned it, twice, three times.
Until only the truth of it
remained.

Sean Beckett
Poet & Student

Sean graduated with an MFA in poetry from Boston University and is now studying theology at Regent College in Vancouver.

Painting by Hermann Stilke