Slightly different

POSTERITY

Scratched free from palimpsest cocoon with shard
a half-blind scholar-nun retrieves a line.
Thinks book-dust breathless that it might be mine
and smuggles her transcription past a guard

wadded inside her cheek. Brand on her face
they caught her once already. Lyric verse
her weakness. In chapel vesper sisters will rehearse
motets setting my words save they replace

your name with god's. They've banned verse that's profane
Burn it like Sappho. Bind with iron locks/
Most scholars think that I was orthodox
and talked of grace not lust. The nun has lain

with secret sisters, dares to speculate
my poems like her, godless, degenerate