The Cry of a Nubian Woman

 

I am waiting

My husband;

Listen,

Time is calling;

I have watched

Eighty mail boats

Up the Nile,

Eighty weeks

By the sands,

Twenty new moons

Over Ramesees:

Come back,

My husband,

Come back from Cairo;

It is time,

The Nile is growing old.

 

I am waiting

My son;

Listen,

Time is calling;

I have stood

At the door

Alone,

No daughter-in-law,

No small child

To hold my hand;

I am longing for a feast,

For a wedding;

Come back,

My son,

Come back from Khartoum;

It is time,

The Nile is rising fast.

P.N.

****

 

 

Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, the people of Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead.

 

The worship of Adonis (Tammuz) was practiced by the Semitic peoples of Babylon and Syria, and the Greeks borrowed it from them as early as the seventh century before Christ.

 

In the religious literature of Babylonia, Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature.

 

Every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him to the house where dust lies on the door and bolt. During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kinds; all life was threatened to extinction.

Sir James George Frazer

THE GOLDEN BOUGH

 

****

 

 

That Day in Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor*

 

Adonis you have slumbered long

In the Underworld of her deep embrace.

When in Friendly fickle jest

I gave permission to Persephone

I little guessed the long night

Of her Arctic Winter Love

Would hold so fast beyond its season due.

My warm rains alone cannot melt

This vast glacial continent;

They change to bitter sleet, unappeased.

A deluge worthy of Olympians,

Lachrymal gifts of more than one god

Must be meted out to quicken

To imperceptible arouse

The frozen earthen mountain breast.

Aphrodite awaits you;

Even shallow roots can remain strong

But the Young Bud freezes in its sheath.

N.N.

 

*Encountering my spouse's future mistress in Friendly's, I intuited her desires and granted that all ties had been severed. Later, in a moment of regret, this poem was written.

 

 

 

Black-White Witch

 

I have always been

Your Black-White Witch

And always have

Appalled you.

You, the Corn Child,

But a babe,

Not ready yet

For mating,

Must be sheared again,

Go underground

To come back stronger.

But restless I

Prowl at the mouth

Of Hell, marveling

At such deep sleep,

Unripe persimmon

At that foolish

Jealous clasp

Of Persephone*

Upon your Aurum limbs,

So bound the

Brooding shoots

May never burst forth.

Now my pacing

Doubles, 'til I

Flee your brewing

Faulted terrain

In search of

Golden Boughs,

Full flowered and

Light suspended

'Twixt sky and earth.**

Where will I be,

I wonder,

When and if

You finally find

The force of

All that fertile

Seething promise:

 

. . . And I am gone;

Mistletoe clings

To new oak sapling.

N.N.

 

 

*Persephone is celebrated as the Goddess of Fertility, abducted by the God of the Dead Underworld, much to the sorrow of her weeping mother, Demeter. Yet this myth is further complicated by the introduction of Adonis, for according to the Greeks, Aphrodite gave the babe Adonis to Persephone for safekeeping; and when Persephone beheld the babe, she was so struck by him, she kept him beyond his promised stay; hence almost stifling this gift of Beauty from the Goddess of Love, instead of nurturing him to fruition. Thus, the seasons issue three-fold from 1) the abduction of Persephone who is permitted to visit Demeter annually, during Spring and Summer; from 2) Persephone's jealous guard over Adonis, who must annually be sought from the Dead Underworld by Aphrodite and returned to the sunlight; and from 3) the Tammuz myth of the death and resurrection of all living things. (See above excerpt from Sir James George Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH.)

 

**Mistletoe on oak is the symbolic union of the White Goddess and the Horned God of Fertility in pagan rituals. A "Golden Bough" is an oak bough that is made to appear the color of gold by the mistletoe which is flowering there. Mistletoe, forever blooming on another plant, is the magical embodiment of life, the spirit of the wood.

 

 

A Celtic Song

 

Oh,

On the wind it blows,

The life;

Who knows

Wither to, it goes?

But the wind blowing,

The wind knowing;

Lo,

The wind knows

Where the life goes,

Over

The soft snow,

Under

The rainbow;

The wind blows

Where the mistletoe grows.

P.N.

 

 

Horned God

 

You are my wild Horned God.

On Norse and Danaan strands

Long before the Christians came

And changed You into Devil,

You were mine,

Alone,

And gave me your Golden Horn

All through the frigid Northern Night.

I loved You then ---

A febrile, full possession ---

And I love You still.

For years I have dreamed

Of your Dark Eyes and Face,

Man-Child,

In Nightmares,

Afraid

Of your Will and Kiss of Infamy.

Sometimes,

In others,

I have caught glimpses of You,

But always You eluded me ---

Except in those Dreams.

And then,

Oh then --

Naked under Sirius,

Skyswept,

We howled and rode,

Until

Whistling over Beltane Fires,*

You took your savage braid-bound witch

And tamed her into Goddess,

Birthing Unicorns.

N.N.

 

*Druidic May lst fires, believed, possibly, to have been of human sacrifice.

 

 

 

Baalbek

 

The moon is full over the trees,

And night wears a halo.

In the temple only the wind prays

And the ancient goddess

Lies forgotten.

Only the silence remembers

The sacred sounds

Ten thousand years.

P.N.

 

 

He Always Said I Was a Witch

 

Yesterday you asked me

Why he so abhorred me.

Remembering the photograph

I'd tacked to the dart target,

Sticked with pins and rent

Gaping with the sculpting tool,

I shivered, giddy with knowledge

That this same marked hex

Lay face down in my bedroom

Where we would make love that night.

 

On quivering tongue were words I bit to hide the fork:

He always said I was a witch --

Left-handed, strawberry-crossed at birth.*

Vixen-mouthed with cloven chin and

Fixing, glittering eyes.

Such cruel cold aspect

Froze dread terror in him

And he was helpless

In my icy arms,

Once loving, turned to vice.

 

You wear black capes, he said,

And consort with Jews;

You will never be faithful.

Worse than Judas, you

Denied him as a child.

You had no innocence,

No virginity;

There was no blood when you were taken;

Surely you should be burned.

 

And so this evening

Having found a witchcraft volume,

I let fall its pages,

Like Queequeg's bones upon the deck,

To the liturgy I'd thought my own.**

I knew then that he was right

And I was, indeed,

A true Daughter of the Danaans.***

N.N.

 

*Strawberry marks at the nape of the neck and base of the spine were thought to be signs of a witch.

 

**Reading Erica Jong's WITCHES, I'd discovered that we'd invoked our muses with the same words of Robert Graves from THE WHITE GODDESS and written several similar poems. (The Muse or White Goddess represents the waxing fertile moon; the Black Clad Witch of Evil is the decaying, waning moon. And both are phases of Beleli, the Mother Goddess.)

 

***The Danaans were a Greek tribe, worshipers of the White Goddess Io (a maiden turned goddess, who dwelt by the Nile and was the mythical descendent of Isis, Egyptian Goddess of Fertility). The Danaans were driven North to Denmark during the invasion of the Syrians around 1400 B.C. My forebears are Danes, both literally and by metaphor.

 

 

 

 

 

A Witch Doctor in Borneo Looks at Western Man

 

Not everything,

Not everything can they do,

These civilized ones.

There are still things so strange

They will never understand -- Never.

They have left them far behind.

They can no longer talk to Gods,

Their magic spirit has been tamed.

Ah, sad ones.

To be so lost;

They come to us and ask,

"Let us see you walk on fire."

"Call the fish from out the sea."

"Make the great turtles rise."

They watch and then they laugh.

"Conjurers," they say.

But wait, wait until the storm comes,

Three weeks of rain and fury.

Then watch them;

They too will throw kava to the Devil God,

They too will apologise to Tui Revu Revu.

Oh yes, not everything can they do.

They cannot believe,

They cannot sing to Hina,

They do not know how to ask her for sharks.

Alas, poor men,

They do not even know how to do nothing.

They come to us searching;

We show them and then they do not want to go home.

Alas, poor men -- so civilized, so tamed, so trapped.

P.N.

 

****

 

 

Goddess, teach me to praise

loss, death and the passing of

all things -- for from this flux

I know your blessings flow.

Erica Jong

WITCHES

 

****

 

 

Sounds of Infinity

 

In the still of night,

The snow falls,

The clock ticks,

And a child stirs in the womb.

P.N.

 

 

The Cycle

 

The White Goddess of the Moon

Fairer than her own cool evening cape

Waxes full into a gray craven hag

Burying her head in her black hood.

Her skull's growing scimiter hangs

Like a melted candle of silver.

Even in her most brimming moment

As the ovum bursts forth within the womb

So dashes across the white-gold disk

That dark sharp silhouette of doom.

Withered, waning, the burning moon's

Quick wick is extinguished with the crescent

Leaving cold new moon in slumber bunting.

N.N.

 

 

Artemis* as Subject: All Kind

 

This is what I would write about:

My awe of witch-kissed beauty

Condemned and haunting frailty.

Even the moon, whose cycle-bound

Face seems so everlasting

Like our bright new love, surviving,

Will one night be swallowed by

The fiery red giant** of death; but

She will be consumed with smile on lips.

N.N.

 

*Artemis is Goddess of the Hunt on Earth, the Witch Hecate in Hell, and a Moon Goddess in Air.

 

**Bound copy (original) of Artemis as Subject . . . reads "The fiery red sun of death".

 

To a Him

 

With wings

I could be

An Angel

A butterfly

Or a bird.

Well,

With horns

What could

You be

Kind Sir?

P.N.

 

 

Sonnet for a Cruel Bacchanal Muse

 

I'm exhausted by your right brain images;

My fossae sinistrae grow thick with mosses.

Like an odalisque who's lain too long abed,

Plump on whole clams with horseradish spiced

And by wet swollen lips sucked

From scallop-canopied shell beds,

Unable to heave he bloated body

Upright, I can lo longer copy

This uncultured film, mother of pearl,

Membraneous lining. Dura Mater dexter.

Let go and leave me to intercourse

With civilization once more

Lest of this Roman gorging I burst,

This orgiastic carnival feast.

N.N.

 

 

From a Fifth Avenue Bus -- A Familiar Stranger

 

On many a soft Spring night I have passed 1125,

Through many a year I have seen you guarding the door,

And tonight you, the moon and I are the same,

Except the white of the moon has stained your hair,

And a new sign says, "Stop on the red light."

P.N.

 

 

A New Sign

 

Before I was born, I know, that night,

sweating and covered with prickley heat,

you hauled us both (such a heavy load)

onto this same bus* and rode

it all the way to Washington Square,

praying all the bumps would dare

me to begin the separating

I could not seem to start, loving

the womb so -- tenacious, late.

I'll never know if you wrote this that

August night, recalling soft spring

and the changes I would bring.

 

Or perhaps it was a later date,

as your faded shorthand, hard to translate,

points white moon finger that might have stained your hair

too. the stop sign an ominous "Beware".

N.N.

*See From a Fifth Avenue Bus, above.

 

 

 

 

 

• Childhood: Poems of Innocence