explore #460 on 3/08/08
The Poem as mask – Muriel Rukeyser (1913 – 1980)
When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness,
it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down
with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.
No more masks! No more mythologies!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.
For the sea does not lie like the death you imagine;
the sea is the real sea, here it is.
This is the living.
This peace is the face of the world,
a fierce angel who in one lifetime lives
fighting a lifetime, dying as we all die,
becoming forever
the continual god
"Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed."
Muriel Rukeyser
"Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings,
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed."
Muriel Rukeyser, "Elegy in Joy", The Green Wave (1948)
