Because if people are going to have interesting conversations in comments to your posts, you might as well memorialise it. :-)
Psyche to Eros
Do you think of me then, waiting on the rock?
It was cold – the wind bellied my red mantle, embroidered
with suns and wheels and dandelions. Their
warmth was only pictures; my bare feet bled
on the ragged stones. From the dark hills cold glints
of trumpets bid farewell: they were leaving me, though
my mother had clung like lichen clings, had wept
like water gushing from blank granite.
A beautiful sacrifice, I.
In this dark place – all softness, as a scrap
of thistle-down, as the fluff
of a wild-cat nursing kits – my eyes
are shut with your kisses, your murmuring
willow-voice all I hear. I drink you,
as night drinks blindness from a bowl.
Ah, love,
I dreamed that I married a falcon,
and slept in his feather-soft nest in the cliff
but I looked in his eyes,
sun-yellow,
and knowing me, he fled.
I might travel the hills to find that bird,
and cut my feet on the rocks,
and wear the wind for a mantle.
Until I see you,
you will never know.
--Cat Pegg
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7 comments:
Have I mentioned I'm in total awe of Cat's poetry.
Total, total awe.
That's some mighty fine writing--- tactile, full of depths--- heck "I drink you,
as night drinks blindness from a bowl" is so wonderful!
This is a mighty gloss on Apuleius-- warms a Classicist heart--- but it is more than that (o glorious luxury!)--- Is Cat capturing in her verse the embodied soul contemplating desire itself and devoting itself to physical existence? (I have not read the Apuleius in years-- such a reading is a potential there... but I think that is the extent of it)
In any case...choice.
Thank you.
*blush*
What it's about? Apart from the obvious, hmm...
Trust.
You are most welcome. Trust. Yes that too. And probably other things too! Reception's a funny thing, no?
I thought it was an interesting take on Plausible Deniablity Syndrome. You want someone to know that you're interested in them, but without actually committing to saying so, so you play lots of Maybe games.
Here, Eros loves Psyche and wants to possess her, but without actually facing her and looking her in the eye. It's a very defensive kind of love. When she tries to look at him, he takes off like a feral animal. He's lost his plausible deniability.
All the best poems are about more than one thing, and speak differently to different people.
On more reflection, the two scenes depicted in the poem are about waiting. The choices and the action haven't happened, but the anticipation is drawing down on those moments of stillness.
It reminds me of talking to one of the conceptual artists for the Lord of the Rings movies - he'd done some truly wonderful paintings. I asked him which scenes he most liked to paint, and he said "the still ones, right before the action starts."
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