Persephone - Poem

Literary Review, Summer, 2000 by B. A. St. Andrews

   I.

   They call me Daughter of Darkness,
   Pomegranate Girl, call me
   wanton, say I yielded foolishly
   to some wild force surging through
   curled fronds and came to harm
   because I could resist no more
   than Sibyls roused to madness
   by Apollo's kiss. But there is
   more to bitter sacrifice than this.

   II.

   Everywhere that day were poppies:
   silver light and pollen like gold boats
   bobbing in lakes of air. The fragrance
   of my carefree life rose higher
   than incense on Greek altars.
   Yet for me the morning seemed sadder
   than all supplication, more desperate
   than twilight birds calling "Lost, lost,"
   more choked with yearning than Demeter's
   devoted throngs murmuring for grain
   or rain or respite from imagined wrongs.

   I was led from childhood friends--
   Sisters of Cyclamen, Morning's Maids,
   Flower Weavers whose laughter
   was gold coins around my feet. I
   only wandered off because I heard
   a larkspur speak my name. Tipping
   my ear to its emerald lip for the secret
   I slipped like dew down its stem.

   III.

   Crying. Entangled. Caught in a web
   of roots I knew the truth of all
   vanishing things. I cried out for
   Demeter until the mud dividing her
   domain from all that is now mine
   smeared my mouth and sealed my eyes.

   Thrown under a wheel of darkness,
   I was ground down like amber
   wheat under remorseless stone.
   Falling inside such darkness: I,
   Maid of All Meadows, Singer
   of Streams and Skies. In this
   infinity of falling I found this
   lost world, this twilight world:

   I, Cherished of Sunlight, Sister
   of Dawn, Child of May, Heir to
   All Harvests. I was broken
   stone thrown in the Well
   of Nothingness. But there is more
   to bitter sacrifice than this.

   IV.

   I could hear, far as skies above me,
   Demeter's terror. She clawed canyons,
   tore mountains like green silk, lifted
   forests full of sleeping creatures
   to find me. I stumbled on below
   through dank infinity. Nearly blind
   I groped through valleys of blue
   smoke, crossed bridges of bone
   and blasted root thrown over
   vaporous chasms, took into my
   clotted lungs the cloying
   incense of the moldering dead.

   Suddenly He spoke my name or
   another name that is now mine.
   His voice was shy as April
   hyacinths, his voice was sorrow
   beyond the solace of all seasons.
   His voice took shape swaying
   like a silver rope trailing
   a skiff through water. His eyes
   were hyacinths, purple with
   loss, vineyards of longing,
   the thirst of desert roots.

   His arms were silver sickles
   harvesting gold grain around
   my heart. I held my palms
   as shields and warning hard
   against my chest and still
   his eyes pressed unrelenting
   inside my emerald glade.
   Finally he quieted and lay
   like a faun on nests of pine.

   Thus, like a small terrified beast,
   Hades became mine. His skin
   was soft and crisp as morning
   crocus. His cold bolted through me
   like blue lightning could once do.
   My touch shifted like light across
   his mottled skin. Under my hands
   he was like sleepy silver snakes
   of Mother's palace that twined
   themselves to bracelets on my
   arm to waken from some dream
   or fright and bite the tender limbs
   they dreamt upon. Meaning no harm.

   V.

   Queen of Afterlife, caught between
   such sweetness and such strife, I
   startled into this, my second life.
   Above us all the while was Demeter
   freezing sap and womb and season.
   When her ceaseless ragings threatened
   even Phoebus, Zeus called both worlds
   to reason. Hades must atone;
   Demeter could not remain alone.

   Again, for sacrifice, the Gods chose
   me, Queen of Seeds, Loom of Shadows.
   So I came to wander in both worlds,
   one my mother's, one my lover's:
   neither purely mine. Before slipping
   again through that slender larkspur's
   stem I made the Promise
   of the Pomegranates. I chose
   to take that blood seed from His
   trembling lips. It folded like a secret
   child beneath the curled rose
   of my tongue. The King of Death
   and I were pledged forever One.

   To weeping choirs of birds I
   kissed those violet eyes and vowed
   return. Then, sure of my purposes
   as a seed (sure of the double life
   known by the secret root that feeds
   the sun-gorged fruit) I took up
   the task of separation, half
   from sunshine, half from night
   and climbed again the thin
   green path to Earth and light.

   VI.

   Much altered was the place
   of sunstorms as I hurried to my
   childhood home. The landscape
   was abloom with only stones;
   I seemed to walk frost-dazed
   roads alone. Then as through
   a distant crystal cloud I saw
   Her. Mother, wearing a diadem
   of snow, was crooning a dirge
   from the dawn of days. Glazed
   pines stretched blue fingers
   toward a frozen sun. At once
   pure love for the Mother of
   All Things blazed up in me.

   As suddenly I felt heat flare
   at my back; my every step
   sprung flowers: bloodroot, snow
   drop, gentian, sage. I heard
   a wood thrush sing. When I
   moved inside the circle of my
   Mother's arms the whole
   exultant Earth cried awakenings.
   Summer days are a hummingbird's
   kiss; summer days roll swift
   as rivers. But there is more to
   bitter sacrifice than this.

   VII.

   Thus was my Destiny decided:
   Dutiful to green mother and to
   tenebrous lover I must search
   out those I love and leave them.
   Arriving only and always to depart
   my full heart knows its shatterings
   and has reasons to split open
   tender as red maple leaves.

   I am uncomplaining seed
   and self-containing sorrow:
   Eternal Wife, Eternal Daughter
   I am both Life and Afterlife.
   Silent I am the music
   of two worlds. Persephone,
   Queen of Shadows. I,
   Kore, the Pomegranate Girl.