Brigid
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sun Feb 3 10:16:45 CST 2008
That someday, delivered at last
from this terrifying vision,
I might sing out in praise and
jubilation unto approving angels;
that no single tone shall fail
to sound due to a slack,
a doubtful or a broken string
when clearly struck by
the hammer of my heart;
that my joyful face
might stream with radiance
and these hidden tears at last
erupt in blossoms fully blown,
I must learn to hold these
nights of anguish dear!
O Sisters Of Lament,
why did I not kneel
more lowly to receive you-
surrender myself more fully
to your loose and flowing hair?
We are wastrels of our sorrows,
gazing beyond them into the
desolate reaches of endurance
where we seek to know their ends.
They are but our winter foliage,
our somber evergreen,
a single season of our inner year;
nor season only, but land,
colony, storehouse,
floor and residence.~
You ask, is this P or NP. I say it's Rilke, therefore. . . .
"If you want compairisons, which you don't, I think most of Rilke."
Thomas Pynchon, in a letter to Richard Farina.*
It is certain, alas,
that we are strangers
to the alleys of the
City of Sorrow, where
in the falsified silence
born of continual clatter,
the mold of emptiness ejects
a strutting figure: the gilded din,
the exploding memorial.
O, with what finality
would an angel trample to dust
their marketplace of consolation,
bounded by the church with its
off-the-rack indulgences: as
tidy, dull and shut tight
as a post office on Sunday.
Outside, always, curls
the edge of the carnival.
Swings of freedom!
High divers and
dedicated jugglers!
And cosmeticized fortune's
metaphoric shooting gallery
whose tin targets clang and
spin when struck by some
marksman's chance shot-
who, dizzy with applause,
seeking further luck,
stumbles down the midway
where diverse attractions
seduce, drum and hawk their wares.
For adults only-a special attraction:
graphic reproduction of currency!
Titillating! The sex life of money,
in the nude, gonads and all,
before your very eyes-
educational and guaranteed
to enhance your virility....
Beyond the last billboard-
plastered with ads for "Deathless,"
the bitter beer, sweet
to those who drink it
(so long as they nibble fresh
distractions between sips)-
behind the billboard,
just to the rear: the real world.
Children play and lovers touch,
off to the side,
intent in the thin grass,
while dogs do as nature bids.
A youth is drawn further on,
enamoured of a young Lament.
Into the fields he follows-
"Beyond," says she,
"far distant do we dwell!"
"Where?" he inquires,
by her bearing swayed.
Her shoulder, her neck,
bespeak a noble origin.
Anon he leaves her;
turns...waves.
What's the use?
She is a lament.
Where I'm coming from, mostly, is the Reclaiming Tradition [funny to call
something so new a tradition, but remember: we reclaimed it from older
mines]. On account of so many of that set of shared concepts circles
around and comes from Starhawk, and as Brigid/Imbloc is happening now,
her thoughts would be of value right about now:
On Prayer at Brigid
Feb. 1 is Brigid Eve, the beginning of one of the major festivals
of the year for Witches, sacred to the ancient Celtic Goddess of
the holy well and the sacred flame, who presides over the forge,
over poetry and healing. And its also a full moon, when we
Witches believe the great energies of creativity and fruition flood
the earth. So it’s a good time to think about prayer. ^
Only those who died young,
in the primordial equanimity
of their weaning,
follow her lovingly.
She waits for maidens
and befriends them,
gently shows them
her attire: pearls
of sorrow and veils
fine-spun of patience.
Alongside young men
she walks in silence.
Witches and Pagans sing, chant, dance, drum and get wild in
our rituals. All are forms of prayer, forms of communication with
the Mysterious Ones, the great energies of birth, growth, death
and regeneration that go beyond our limited understanding.
Beyond, in the valley
where they dwell, an
elderly Lament fondly indulges
a youth who questions her.
"Once," she tells him, "we were
a great family, we Laments.
Our fathers worked the mines
of yon mountain range.
Among men you still might find,
at times, a polished lump
of original sorrow-or a nugget
of petrified rage from the slag
of some ancient volcano.
Aye, from yonder range it came.
We once were wealthy."
Prayer is what mediates between our human minds and that
which we cannot envision or even imagine. When we talk about
a specific Goddess, such as Brigid, we are talking about a particular
constellation of energies, imagery, myth and history. When we focus
our minds on Brigid, when we pray to her, we awaken those same
energies within us and around us: fire and water, passion and
compassion, healing and inspiration.
And lightly she leads him through
the spacious landscape of Lament,
shows him the pillars of the temples
and the crumbled towers from which,
in olden days, the Lords of Lament
so wisely ruled... shows him the
tall trees of tears and the fields
of woe full flowered
(such woe as the living know
only as a shrub unbudded);
shows him the herds of grief
where they stand grazing.
Once in awhile a startled bird,
darting through their skyward gaze,
inscribes its lonely cry upon the clouds.
At dusk she leads him to the graves
of the sibyls and dire prophets-
of all the Lords of Lament
the longest lived.
In my community, we gathered Friday night, (Brigid’s festival
spans Feb. 1 and 2) to light candles, offer sacred water, and
make a pledge to Brigid for the year. Hearing and witnessing
each others’ pledges, we support our intentions to grow, to
change, to act in the world with more love and more beneficent
power. Our prayers are to the Goddess—but also to our
community, for the Goddess is immanent in us and in the
relationships between us.
As night lowers, their steps slacken
and soon, rising like the moon,
the Guardian Sepulchre is seen,
kin to the Sphinx of Nile fame,
lofty in cavernous countenance.
They marvel at the regal head
which silently presents the human
face to be weighed upon the
scale of the stars, eternally.
When Ireland became Catholic, Brigid became a Saint. The
Feast of Candlemas honors her fire, and today, nuns have
relit her sacred fiame at Kildare. To all who celebrate her
festival, to all whose hearts grow lighter as the sun grows
stronger and the days get visibly longer, bright blessings!
His sight cannot grasp it,
giddy still from early death,
but her's startles an owl from
behind the rim of the crown,
who brushes the rounder of
his cheeks, leaving a faint
impression upon the new
hearing born of his death;
an indescribable outline
scrawled as though across
the leaves of an open book.
My first encounter with Rilke came when I first Read Gravity's Rainbow and it
left a deep impression me, perhaps the deepest of any that Pynchon's
writings left me. I do not see a system in Rilke's callings, only a desire, a
cry of the heart, the soul's deep callings, as clear as a child's call for mother.
And higher, the stars. New.
Stars of the Land of Lament.
Slowly the elder names their names:
"Look there: the Rider, the Staff,
and that larger constellation
they call the Fruit Garland.
Higher still, toward the Pole,
the Cradle, the Path, the
Burning Book, the Doll, the Window.
In the southern sky,
clearcut as the lines within
a consecrated hand,
sparkles the luminous M
denoting Mothers."
But the dead must away
and silently the Elder Lament
leads him as far as the Arroyo,
where gleaming in the moonlight
springs the source of joy.
With reverence she names it,
saying: "Endlessly it flows
into the world of men."
Bridgit is the first bud, the "white track", the first cherry blosoms, the first
rays of the new re-arising life, earth's great awakening [leastaways if you
live above a given latitude in the northern hemisphere], a cause for deep
celebration, or maybe even throwing a mammoth party, like Mardi Gras.
They stand at the mountain's foot.
Weeping, she embraces him.
These are the tears of early spring, from the source of joy, the rider-waite ace
of cups:
http://www.246.dk/Ptar-c01.jpg
Alone, he starts his climb
up the peak of Primal Pain.
Not once do his footsteps echo
from this soundless path of fate.
Were the endlessly dead
to awaken some symbol,
within us, to indicate
themselves, they might
point to the catkins
dangling from the leafless
branches of the Hazel trees.
Or speak in drops of rain
falling to dark earth
in early spring.
Then we,
who have known joy
only as it escapes us,
rising to the sky,
would receive the
overwhelming benediction
of happiness descending. ~
~This is Robert Hunter's translation of Rilke's 10th Duino Elegy, from:
http://www.hunterarchive.com/fileS/Poetry/Elegies/elegy10.html
As much as I love Stephen Mitchell's translation, Robert Hunter
speaks to me on another level.
http://www.hunterarchive.com/fileS/Poetry/Elegies/Duino_Elegies.html
*From "Positively 4th Street" [pg. 271], David Hajdu, ISBN 086547642
^ I suppose the Difference between Starhawk and most other practioneers
of the old religion is that the mainstream press regards her as intellectually
credible, at least enough to be regualrly published in the New York Times
and Newsweek, a bar Scott Cunningham and Z. Budapest have yet to leap
over. This lovely article on Brigid comes from Newsweek's archives at:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/starhawk/2007/02/
Starhawk's "Dreaming the Dark" is the most intelligent examination of the
moral and karmic responsibility of Earth-centered religions I have read:
http://tinyurl.com/2sr25b
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