Cultural Mythology: Myth, culture, and consciousness

The Layers

This poem by Stanley Kunitz feels appropriate to our current conversation about the painful wandering of Odysseus and life-as-odyssey.

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face,
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

---Stanley Kunitz,from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz.

Artemis to Actaeon

THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs
The mortal legend -- thou that couldst not live
Nor look on me (so the divine decree)!
That sawst me in the cloud, the wave, the bough,
The clod commoved with April, and the shapes
Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark.
Mocked I thee not in every guise of life,
Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well,
Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled,
Luring thee down the primal silences
Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb?
Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out
Relentlessly from the detaining shore,
Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices,
Forth from the last faint headland's failing line,
Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge
And hid thee in the hollow of my being?
And still, because between us hung the veil,
The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet
Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life,
Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face
Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul
Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought.
And mine?

The gods, they say, have all: not so!
This have they -- flocks on every hill, the blue
Spirals of incense and the amber drip
Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines,
First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate,
Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage,
And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew:
Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself!
And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane,
Freeze to the marble of their images,
And, pinnacled on man's subserviency,
Through the thick sacrificial haze discern
Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak
Through icy mists may enviously descry
Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun.
So they along an immortality
Of endless-vistaed homage strain their gaze,
If haply some rash votary, empty-urned,
But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand,
Break rank, fling past the people and the priest,
Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine,
And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch,
Drop dead of seeing -- while the others prayed!
Yea, this we wait for, this renews us, this

Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams,
Who are but what you make us, wood or stone,
Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems,
Or else the beating purpose of your life,
Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues,
The face that haunts your pillow, or the light
Scarce visible over leagues of laboring sea!
O thus through use to reign again, to drink
The cup of peradventure to the lees,
For one dear instant disimmortalized
In giving immortality!
So dream the gods upon their listless thrones.
Yet sometimes, when the votary appears,
With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes,
Too young, they rather muse, too frail thou art,
And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil
And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?
And so to their incurious loves return.

Not so with thee; for some indeed there are
Who would behold the truth and then return
To pine among the semblances -- but I
Divined in thee the questing foot that never
Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday
Or calls achievement home. I from afar
Beheld thee fashioned for one hour's high use,
Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop.
Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams,
Surprising me as harts surprise a pool,
Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined
Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie
Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms,
And said: Because I love thee thou shalt die!

For immortality is not to range
Unlimited through vast Olympian days,
Or sit in dull dominion over time;
But this -- to drink fate's utmost at a draught,
Nor feel the wine grow stale upon the lip,
To scale the summit of some soaring moment,
Nor know the dulness of the long descent,
To snatch the crown of life and seal it up
Secure forever in the vaults of death!

And this was thine: to lose thyself in me,
Relive in my renewal, and become
The light of other lives, a quenchless torch
Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust
And the last garland withers from my shrine.

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937.

You can find this poem and other work by Wharton at the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia

Litany by Billy Collins

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine. 

Billy Collins

Collins is one of my favorite poets. Many thanks to Amy for sharing this with me and here is a link to another poem by Collins that I love, Forgetfulness .

(The painting is by Sebastian Stoskopff (1597-1657)

His flute of delight

Hark, hark to His Flute of delight!
On the bank of Life’s lone shadowy river
He plays to quell our Night!

Wreathed in sweet smiles, a vision of Gleam,
He is crowned with His aerial Love!
He dances, a beacon to derelict souls,
On earth star’s kinship to prove!

 Song of Krishna, translated by Dilip Kumar Roy

January

                                   When snow brings sleep and silence covers all,                
                                   Raven dreams skyward to pluck the light once more
                                   from heaven's roof. Waking, framed funereal
                                   against the ash-gray sky, brown fields before
                                   him capped in spinning white, the wind roars
                                   echo to his hoarse quork and rattle call---
                                   to hunt with corvid cunning, swooping low
                                   for any darting, glint-eyed catch---he alone
                                   champion, prime, primal, predatory one
                                   can hold back cold, hunger, death and night.
                                   Norse god Hrafn, who first captured the sun,
                                   hurled it down to make the dark world bright,
                                   black against the crystal curtain soaring
                                   pine high, greets winter's stroke upon his wings.

---Julianna McCarthy, from A Bird As Black As The Sun: California Poets on Crows and Ravens. The image is Odin's Raven by Jennifer Webb.

I just couldn't resist wrapping up this meditation on Odin with a poem--- and I see his messengers everywhere here in the Mojave. This is a great book of poetry by the way, if these smart birds speak to you too.

Happy Thanksgiving

        Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--
   equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
   keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.

--Mary Oliver, from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

(the image is mine, called "Leaf Seed.")

Real magic

To Jessie

I found a butterfly wing
on the stone steps;
deep copper,
magic irridescence,
tiny yellow suns,
a microcosm of nature's perfect
attention to detail;
I carried it to the truck
carefully placed
that delicacy
on the dirty rough seat;
It would be a gift
for my young daughter
still in her magic,
still child enough
to see
the magic in it.

I returned to work,
filled my head with measurements,
plans,
regrets,
imagined conversations,
the stuff work days
are made of;

It was the next day,
biking at the lake,
coming around a rocky bend,
I remembered the wing.
Of course, it could
not have survived.

Before long the
grit of life
will mercifully toughen her skin;
her wonder will retreat
to a safe depth
and will resurface again only
in later years;
Some brisk fall morning,
drinking coffee on her porch,
she will have a vision
of an ungiven gift
from a busy father.

---Phillip Rosenberg from Raised in the Shadow.

Where the wind blows

As always I begin with the caveat that a good story can be read from many different directions. I titled my telling "The Cauldron of Inspiration and the Birth of Taliesin" instead of "Cerridwen and Taliesin" because I feel that she is in service to the real magic in the story--- the muse.

The uncanny witch is an instigator. She gets things going in ways that we can't predict or control. In the form of Cerridwen she seeds the imagination by opening a creative doorway that Gwion, who literally becomes a seed and then seeds her, steps through. I love that Cerridwen lives on an island in the middle of a large lake (Lake Bala is four miles long and one mile wide and sacred in the Welsh tradition). As a reflective body, a lake suggests the play between the surface and the depths and often symbolizes a portal into the unconscious.

Cerridwen brews the potion, but does she get what she wants? The fire flares and the cauldron sputters and suddenly the gifts that she intended for her son Morvran are given instead to Gwion, who is reborn as the great bard Taliesin. In the end she is mother to a wise poet, despite her hostility to Gwion. Something works out perfectly and a marvelous boon is given to the world, but not in the form that Cerridwen intended. She can conjure and bring forth but she cannot control who will be gifted. Such is the muse. Which leads me to Taliesin's riddle and its possible significance. Apparently no one in the court had sufficient knowledge of the wind to come up with that answer, and here the story repeats that central message about the unpredictable power of creative inspiration.

What is the wind? From the Greek pneuma, Hebrew ruach, and Arabic ruh, this wind is the divine breath of creation, the Holy Spirit, the disperser of seeds. It is that unpredictable factor that moves or compels us to change course, perhaps pushing us in the direction of our destiny. It is another metaphor for the inspiration that takes form as the bard Taliesin.

This is a beautifully layered story of echoing themes. I'll end with one more to ponder: the shapeshifting during Cerridwen's pursuit of Gwion. Shapeshifting reveals the protean nature of the material world. One thing can become another because everything is One thing. And what wisdom did the potion impart, to fuel the creativity of the poet? The ability to know past, present, and future and to apprehend the underlying unity of all things. So is this "just" an old fairy tale with a fun bit of magic or a Celtic commentary on the Tao?

 

Happy Samhain

Halloween was originally Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s Eve. Samhain is a very "thin" time of the year when inhabitants of the visible and invisible realms can easily pass through the veil that separates the two worlds. This is a time when communication with the other side is especially fruitful and we're invited to court the unknown and honor the unseen. This notion of a spirit world behind the visible is both sensationalized and trivialized in our popular imagination, but the crux of the Celtic idea is simply that spirit, psyche, the divine (pick your term) are not far away in some transcendent, distant dimension but immanent in the material world. The ability to apprehend this is the gift of a sensitive heart and poetic imagination.

Samhain marks the descent into the deep dark and offers the promise of rebirth at the winter solstice (Dec 22nd), the longest night of the year. Everything that dies at this time can be transformed, so say goodbye to something that must be left behind and plant seeds of the new. Eat an apple, the fruit of immortality, and bring yourself closer to the spirits that surround us. Show reverence and may you be gifted with inspiration and a poetic tongue.

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

---Mary Oliver

The cauldron of inspiration and the birth of Taliesin (part 2 of 2)

At last the year and a day was up. The last herb had been duly added. The pot had simmered, the contents stirred, and Cerridwen, with great anticipation, brought the son Morvran into the room to receive her blessing and the three potent drops of the potion. Gwion stood by the pot with his long spoon in his hand. “Come,” she said to her young servant,” and bring forth what I have created for my son.” Gwion moved to serve Morvran his portion when the fire leapt and the great pot sputtered and several drops flew out and landed on Gwion’s tender fingers.

Without a thought he thrust the burning fingers into his mouth and instantly he knew all that was true, and he knew that he had stolen Morvran’s birthright and that Cerridwen would kill him.

Young Gwion ran for the door. Cerridwen dropped her son and followed him, arms outstretched. “Come back here,” she cried, “there is no escape from what comes next!” But Gwion understood the full extent of his powers and turned himself into a hare. In rabbit form he raced across the fields fifty times faster than any boy could run. But Cerridwen turned herself into a greyhound and swiftly followed, snapping at his heels.

When he reached the river Gwion jumped in and turned himself into a fish. Down, down, down into the cold depths he dove. His silver fins flashed. But Cerridwen turned herself into an otter, sleek and greedy, and dove after him.

Feeling her whiskers brush his tail, Gwion burst from the water into the sunlight, turned himself into a bird, and flew away. But Cerridwen turned herself into a hawk and followed close behind. In the final moments, before she could plunge down to grip him in her sharp talons, Gwion spied a farmyard and barn down below. He ceased his flapping and as he fell to the earth, changed himself into a grain of wheat on the threshing floor.

Cerridwen followed him down to the farmyard. “Oh you are clever my dear Gwion,” she said, “But not clever enough.” She turned herself into a black hen and began scratching the ground and sorting the many seeds. Until finally she found Gwion and ate him.

Full of frustration at her wasted efforts, Cerridwen went home to the island in the middle of lake Bala. Days passed. To her horror she discovered that she was pregnant and knew it was that little grain of wheat. She decided to kill the child as soon as it was born. But the baby boy was so beautiful that she could not raise her hand against him.

Two days before May Day she sewed him into a leather bag and threw him into the sea.The baby drifted into Cardigan Bay and was found by Prince Elphin, who had come there to net fish. Because the boy was so beautiful, Prince Elphin named him Taliesin, which means “shining brow,” and took the child home and brought him up as his own.

All was well for several years, until royal enemies imprisoned Prince Elphin. The child Taliesin went to the court to demand his release. Everyone laughed although many were impressed by his boldness. “My lord,“ the boy said to the king, “If this be your court, and you are a true king, make me a wager for the life of my guardian. I will pose a riddle to you and your court. If any one can answer it I will go quietly home, but if I confound you all, then Elphin goes free.”

“I see no harm in that,” answered the king, quite certain that no child could perplex him and all the wise men in his court. “Proceed with your riddle.”

“Discover what it is,” said the boy, “The strong creature that can wreak havoc, from before the Flood, Without flesh, without bone, without vein, without blood, without head, without feet… in field and in forest roams… without hand, without foot. It is also as wide as the surface of the earth, and it was not born, nor was it seen.”

The great men of the court pondered and even the poets, the bards of the courts were called. But none knew the answer. So the prince was freed and thus began the fame of Taliesin, the greatest bard to ever live. It is said that he even sang for King Arthur. And the answer to his riddle: the wind.

(Running hare illustration by Tracey Long. Black hen illustration by Anne-Marie Perks)