Contributed by:
Tabitha Dial, YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 4/20/2006 12:55:58 PM
Editor's Note: Great! I had prepared this to be my Poetry
Friday blog. Then I get the latest poem from American Life in
Poetry and I've decided I'll have to post it tomorrow... So... Here
is what I prepared:
I'm breaking with tradition, but still sharing a poem. I
just decided to go with
www.poets.org this week
instead of
American Life in
Poetry.
It fits more with a current theme in my life. I've been
chipping away at a series of poems based on Greek deities and I am
preparing a workshop for
The
Columbine Poets of Colorado that I'm calling the Odyssey of
Poetry.
It'll look at
Homer's
Odyssey and
Louise Gluck's re-examination of the epic poem in
her collection of verse,
Meadowlands. You can read a large number of her poems
here.
This is from Louise Gluck's new collection of poetry,
Averno.
A Myth of Devotion
When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.
A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn't everyone want love?
He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.
Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns-
That's what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there'd be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.
Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn't imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.
He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks:
The New Hell. Then:
The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone's Girlhood.
A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say
I love you, nothing can hurt you
but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you're dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true.