My White Goddess

So let me take you to be a guest at our wedding. The wedding where my poet/friend read the poem that I prepared for the occasion. But, first, let me introduce you to: The White Goddess. That muse that Robert Graves gave us to in his book of the same name. That muse that is the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust - the female spider or the queen-bee. Or, in poetry, the reader over your shoulder. In other words an alter ego, another being, a spirit that is above you. And, believing all that, as I do, let me give you our wedding poem, the one that I wrote, but the one I believe she ordained. It is beautiful, it is mysterious, it is the space that occupies the sheet of water that is:

Nyanza:

when the hand of a plant
feeds on water edge,
lifting dark lotus leaves
feeling the weight upon soft
embryon and pitless eyes -
scarred skin breathes.

Each leaf becomes a plant
where it feeds and moves
across the root of being:
from the strength of stem
to the soul of veins.

Waves penetrate the depth
of green flesh and water,
sent on the drift of birth
from stream and fertile life.

II

Down into the hollow angels
the feeling limbs delve
and contain a struggle
from island's fossiled sea:

broken stems no fortitude
but the rising lotus leaves
over eye that forms the surface
its points of shining beauty.

Arc spreads its span
upon root and downward seed
to feed the living denizen
embellish green upon green.

III

Growth the line continued
black marches of singularity
where break of pattern
envisage loss to death.

Erase the weight of water
day rides upon that hand
as light touches movement
within the calyx of man:

open corolla to take sun
upon the pistil and stamen
where feeling is bled free
to sustain the pith within.

IV

How many worn creatures
evaporate the air, unable
to condense platitude and
envisage spanse omnipotence?

Crimson heads now are still
quiet upon the waterless rock
where face they see a shine
and union becomes their shrine;

but NO Nyanza becomes once more
the sheet of waiting water
containing all the virile life
so soon to adopt a golden lake
and all the earth around the sea
a singularity for moments shared.


And so we began a life together that has survived and will survive to, and beyond, this day. Perhaps, because, the invitation to the wedding said:

Join the blood with the seed
mark the skin with new water
enrich two souls as of one;
wherein the truth will lie.