Sunday, March 27, 2011
Poem by Maya Spector
Persephone’s Lament
Persephone rises from the earth a pale shadow.
Like mist from the water she rises,
Riding the air currents,
Invisible yet palpable, bird-like, with silent flapping wingspan
She turns and wheels,
Uneven, troubled,
Moving at random, integrating this burdensome freedom.
Wherever she drifts the earth quickens below.
A frenzy of surging new growth,
Tremendous bursts of color and beauty explode forth
With the charge of released life-force;
Life-force that hums in the ear and enlivens the heartbeat.
And yet Persephone sees none of it.
She is possessed by the months spent in the fiery molten core of existence.
Her being pumped full of the plans of Pluto her husband,
She consumed it all and swelled with his power.
But the mother fought back through her daughter’s essential goodness
And their conflicting thoughts ripped at her mind
Till she tore into warring fragments,
Each fighting each
And both being her.
Death, fertility,
Power, vengeance,
Passion uncontrollable and
Rage,
Pure rage,
Unleashed rage,
These she now knows and is.
Released, she floats in the heavy winds and gentler breezes,
Whispering unthinkable paradoxes into the ears
Of people who do not see her
And disbelieve their hearing.
Jogging their fingers in their ears
They shake their heads and go on.
And so Persephone’s shattered being
Calls forth rejuvenation while pleading death.
“Oh, beware,” she moans over the fertile valleys, the dusty valleys,
through mutilated aching forests
and petrified endarkened cities.
“Pluto knows the Mother!
He bends the elements,
Shaping them to heavy forms.
He rapes the Mother as he raped me
And his being, engorged with power,
Knows no limitation.
Can you not see his flexed muscles
Gleaming upon your foreheads?
The Mother will not long suffer his violation
And you will bear the loss!”
“Do you not see?” she hisses through fields and sooty streets,
crumbling junkyards and antiseptic shopping centers.
“You feed him with your indifference;
He steps upon your bowed heads.
If his deadly fireballs do not destroy you, your neglect of the Mother will!
And how you will shriek
As the life pours from your broken bodies.
Feigning surprise, you will drink from the cup of fear that he offers
As the Mother’s fury screams out to the heavens.
Her shifting body, her storming elements
Will toss your helpless forms about
Like miniature sailboats caught in a tempest.”
The angel of the earth spews her torments into the winds.
She does so every Spring.
Perhaps once she was recognized and greeted as she passed
But those days are gone.
Very few puzzle over the irony of her release from earth and fire.
The masses are content to live out her effect.
All too eager to accept the affirmations of her flight
They neglect the despair of her voice;
A despair that deepens each year
And awaits the retribution.
- Maya Spector
Note: this is a serious poem, but these are serious times. Sometimes it is necessary to pause and reflect on all that is going on in our world, and to face the issues with honesty and courage. I for one feel that the world is falling apart and rebuilding all at the same time. And, as many say, it is necessary to die (in some manner) in order for rebirth and renewal to occur.
(Image found on Google)
