Blog-cottage has been rather full of builders today, and of my trying to line-edit amidst the noise… and of my thereby missing the incision on the inside of Abigail’s leg (she’s the red and white cocker pup who occaisonally pops up in the window, and is on the newsletter in greater profusion). So tomorrow might be spent stitching that, rather than line edits, with all the interesting need to curtail exercise that will arise. Fun. Not.
So meanwhile, given the parable of the Giant Purple Octopus and its commentary on godhood, I wanted to share one of my favourite poets of all time; Kathleen Raine (link here) and one of her various takes on deity.
This is ‘Transit of the Gods’
Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast
The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother,
All loves and griefs, successive deities
That hold their kingdom in the human breast.
Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body
That half remembers the Annunciation
The passion and the travail and the grief
That wore the mask of my humanity,
I marvel at the soul’s indifference.
For in her theatre the play is done,
The tears are shed; the actors, the immortals
In their ceaseless manifestation, elsewhere gone,
And I who have been Virgin and Aphrodite,
The mourning Isis and the queen of corn
Wait for the last mummer, dread Persephone
To dance my dust at last into the tomb.Kathleen Raine
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Thank you, Manda. That is a truly beautiful poem.