Some Propositions for Orpheus

Some recent work, a take on the story of one Orpheus, AKA Sir Orfeo ...

Some Propositions for Orpheus

And sometimes
she won't return
no matter ...
on her own -
not one descent
then, but many -
and the step by step
walk back up
path out of
the deep world with
each foot
fall recedes
further into
mist closing
in on memories
back back
up into the air
and clear day
strive -
and
turn, to
see, once
more, the vanishing -
not one
descent, and
after each
the journey
lightward follows.

***

Orpheus Blues

Just as well,
he'd say
she was carried
away - there
are losses
that offer
an end.
Completion -

... but, hell, he'd say,

in the silence of your absence
the world I believed I knew
as you becomes cipher and paradox
imagined, remembered -

In diaphanous reality of dream
flesh of white knee taste
of mouth sweet and wet kiss
of lips and labia linger on tongue -
entranced transport
into engendered space
(not one journey down ...)
but wake, alone and one,
all lost except to song.

Brought her up
looked back lost
her just the old
way It goes...

I lose
her over every time
I go down that way.

**

Another Proposition of Analogy

Or like Perceval
pilgrim of the
absolute -
The Grail glimpsed
once as always
in white
samite carried
in careful hands
of a damosel
and lost lost
for lack of
the unknown
Question,
the proper word.

The next day cast out
and castle vanished
lost in mist of moor.

**

"And therewith on his knees
he went so nigh that he touched
the holy vessel and kissed it,
and anon he was whole,
and then he said, 'Lord God,
I thank thee, for
I am healed ...'"
Malory

**

Another to Orpheus
For Joe Safdie

The song can't end
unless, returned,
she stays.

And like
Persephone her twin
she won't - the deal made
you and I,
Orpheo,
alas, were not
part of:

If she did not descend
again into her other
realm -
Remember

there would be no dance
and, less dance,
what are we?
less spring?
less summer's ripening?

What can we do, friend,
but celebrate
each death,
each departure
step by step.

**

Re: Orpheo, A Speculation

Perhaps he sang
at frequencies
she could not quite hear

perhaps that
difference in phase
in fact
grounded
the attraction -

she heard
just the ghost
of the song's
glimmering
insistence
to the ascent

and inexplicably
was drawn to it

and he, gratified
that one so other, lovely

though
she did not hear
what stunned all
enraptured
moved
still in consonance
with the song he made ...

Then looked back
still in unbelief
to bask once more
in her green gaze

and saw
only her descend
toward her dark
territory,
lost once more.

Not one descent ...

So he began again
The cycle his lament

"Oh Eurydice, my love ..."

And felt his heart
once more opening into it:
"Not one," he sang
"descent" ...

even if she only heard
a simulacrum,
a ghostly whisper
of his anthem.

**

Orpheo Hypostasis

Not the Tracian women
angry that he turned them down -
no, Dionysis' own maenads

(could not be wounded
in frenzy
carried fire
on their heads
weren't burned)

oiled tits glistening
in moonlight

he abandoned orgies
baccantes
obliteration

to follow Apollo's lead ...

They broke his flesh
and scattered it like bread.

The head
sang lifted with the lyre
song still sweet adrift
beyond all carnage
bobbing in the river's flow lost
in memory
singing
what it still heard,

"Not one journey down ..."

**

That's it for now, though it still seems to be on the air when I tune in to the proper frequency. More, in other words, later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The painting of Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld is by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1861). Found at Larry A. Brown's website.