Song for Persephone
Jan. 4th, 2006 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI was just going through some old notebooks and found "Song for Persephone," dated October 29, 2002.
What follows -- behind the cut -- grew out of my own experiences with a "Dark God" lover (or two), the discussion of Persephone as archetype in Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman, a half-forgotten poem about Persephone with Hades as her black-leather biker boyfriend, and my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bookchick's assertion that Persephone wasn't kidnapped. She went with Hades "because he was hot."
As I retype this now, exactly as it came from my pen, unedited, more than three years ago, I see it isn't entirely consistent -- or shall I simply assert that, like many myths, it simply reflects the paradoxes of Mystery?
This is my song for Persephone
Persephone, eternal daughter of the Mother
Radiant-dark twin of Athena, daughter of the Father
Can a girl remain a virgin forever?
Eventually life must touch, must penetrate even a goddess-nymph
(Or is that the story we tell ourselves, justifying the violation of innocence?)
He came.
Without consent.
The bargain struck by a distant father,
indifferent to your joys and to the tearing,
shrieking, rending
of your veil
No one asks for this: abduction, violence, isolation
(Had you dreamed maiden dreams of being spirited off by a dark and powerful lover?
Alas, the dark god is not bound by our neat and safe romantic scripts.)
You thought it would be cold in the center of the earth,
away from the life-giving warmth of Helios' rays.
You had not counted on the infernal heat,
the furnaces of the earth's core
where rocks run like mudflows and the dead forge jewels
in Hades' smithy
And He, He who named himself your husband,
he was not cold either.
It was you whose flesh was chill.
His pale hands burned as they touched your skin,
touched you in the secret underworld caves
of your own being,
unexplored by childish maiden games.
What then, Persephone?
Alone with the Dark God,
hidden and muffled behind heavy curtains and locked doors
Flesh to flesh and breath to breath,
Maiden brought suddenly to womanhood,
Were the cries that filled your ears and his
sounds of rage and fear --
or something else?
Or could you not even tell yourself?
There is no going back from initiation.
Queen you are now, and wife.
When springtime comes and you rise
along the dark paths to the earth
waiting breathlessly for your return,
do you feel ill at ease in the gauzy gown
your mother makes for you new each year?
Mother, earth, and friends await their darling nymph,
smile to see you frolic
in the flowering meadows.
Do you ever want to scream as you once screamed at Hades?
A goddess does not eat.
The fatal seeds you chose to consume,
Were they pomegranate?
Or was that a girlish fib
to spare your mother's outraged sensibilities?
It was His seed within you, Persephone,
binding you eternally to the depths.
You have taken on your husband's silences
with his crown
No longer do you whisper giggling confidences.
What bargain did you strike with him,
making transition from victim to co-ruler?
(A transition from child to queen
your mother would never have allowed)
Or is even Hades not sure how it happened?
Lord of the Underworld, did you get more than you bargained for?
What follows -- behind the cut -- grew out of my own experiences with a "Dark God" lover (or two), the discussion of Persephone as archetype in Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman, a half-forgotten poem about Persephone with Hades as her black-leather biker boyfriend, and my friend
bookchick's assertion that Persephone wasn't kidnapped. She went with Hades "because he was hot."As I retype this now, exactly as it came from my pen, unedited, more than three years ago, I see it isn't entirely consistent -- or shall I simply assert that, like many myths, it simply reflects the paradoxes of Mystery?
This is my song for Persephone
Persephone, eternal daughter of the Mother
Radiant-dark twin of Athena, daughter of the Father
Can a girl remain a virgin forever?
Eventually life must touch, must penetrate even a goddess-nymph
(Or is that the story we tell ourselves, justifying the violation of innocence?)
He came.
Without consent.
The bargain struck by a distant father,
indifferent to your joys and to the tearing,
shrieking, rending
of your veil
No one asks for this: abduction, violence, isolation
(Had you dreamed maiden dreams of being spirited off by a dark and powerful lover?
Alas, the dark god is not bound by our neat and safe romantic scripts.)
You thought it would be cold in the center of the earth,
away from the life-giving warmth of Helios' rays.
You had not counted on the infernal heat,
the furnaces of the earth's core
where rocks run like mudflows and the dead forge jewels
in Hades' smithy
And He, He who named himself your husband,
he was not cold either.
It was you whose flesh was chill.
His pale hands burned as they touched your skin,
touched you in the secret underworld caves
of your own being,
unexplored by childish maiden games.
What then, Persephone?
Alone with the Dark God,
hidden and muffled behind heavy curtains and locked doors
Flesh to flesh and breath to breath,
Maiden brought suddenly to womanhood,
Were the cries that filled your ears and his
sounds of rage and fear --
or something else?
Or could you not even tell yourself?
There is no going back from initiation.
Queen you are now, and wife.
When springtime comes and you rise
along the dark paths to the earth
waiting breathlessly for your return,
do you feel ill at ease in the gauzy gown
your mother makes for you new each year?
Mother, earth, and friends await their darling nymph,
smile to see you frolic
in the flowering meadows.
Do you ever want to scream as you once screamed at Hades?
A goddess does not eat.
The fatal seeds you chose to consume,
Were they pomegranate?
Or was that a girlish fib
to spare your mother's outraged sensibilities?
It was His seed within you, Persephone,
binding you eternally to the depths.
You have taken on your husband's silences
with his crown
No longer do you whisper giggling confidences.
What bargain did you strike with him,
making transition from victim to co-ruler?
(A transition from child to queen
your mother would never have allowed)
Or is even Hades not sure how it happened?
Lord of the Underworld, did you get more than you bargained for?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-05 02:55 pm (UTC)I've run up library fines just because I want to hold onto it a little longer!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-06 05:01 am (UTC)She also wrote Gods in Everyman, but I didn't find it nearly as helpful. Maybe a man would?
Now that I'm 41, I should probably read Crossing to Avalon. I feel like the last 2-3 years of my life have been in liminal state, especially the past two.