THE GODDESS, by Denise Levertov
“She in whose lip service
I passed my time,
whose name I knew, but not her face,
came upon me where I lay in Lie Castle!
Flung me across the room, and
room after room (hitting the wall, re-
bounding—to the last
sticky wall—wrenching away from it
pulled hair out!)
till I lay
outside the outer walls!
There in cold air
lying still where her hand had thrown me,
I tasted the mud that splattered my lips:
the seeds of a forest were in it,
asleep and growing! I tasted
her power!
The silence was answering my silence,
a forest was pushing itself
out of sleep between my submerged fingers.
I bit on a seed and it spoke on my tongue
of day that shone already among the stars
in the water-mirror of low ground,
and a wind rising ruffled the lights:
she passed near me in returning from the encounter,
she who plucked me from the close rooms,
without whom nothing
flowers, fruits, sleeps in season,
without whom nothing
speaks in its own tongue, but returns
lie for lie!”
Ur samma blodomlopp där Levertovs ordkroppar flyter:
By the rivers dark
Where I could not see
Who was waiting there
Who was hunting me.
And he cut my lip
And he cut my heart.
So I could not drink
From the river dark.
And he covered me,
And I saw within,
My lawless heart
And my wedding ring
L. Cohen
