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Overview
Daughter, wife, mother, lover, artist, and even priestess are all here in shorter lyrics that cluster around four subjects: blood ties, activism and art, love between women, and archetypes. But Morgan surpasses the political grief and rage she delineated in Monster, her acclaimed first book of poems—especially in the four major metaphysical poems here: “The City of God,” balancing grace and despair; “Easter Island,” on the ironies of transcendence in embattled love; “The Network of the Imaginary Mother,” which became a virtual anthem of the women’s movement; and “Voices from Six Tapestries,” inspired by the famous Lady and theUnicorn weavings that hang in the Musée de Cluny in Paris.
Themes of familial love and hurt, mortality, survival, and transformation inform the poems collected here as the author weaves a wise and powerful self into being. Lady of the Beasts is Robin Morgan at her most lyrical yet.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504006460 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 03/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 133 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Lady of the Beasts
Poems
By Robin Morgan
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1976 Robin MorganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0646-0
CHAPTER 1
BLOOD TIES
LOYALTY OATH
Ungrateful Daughter, Intolerant Friend,
Officious Associate, Malcontent Wife:
these signs, hand-lettered in uneven print.
The oppressed carry them around inside my skull
in shifts. They want to organize,
despite my efforts to negotiate
an individual settlement with each.
Even in darkness, barred from sleep
by their chanting, I know I must break that union
or turn hopeless, mad, intransigent—no,
that's another lie. Management
has botched the whole thing, all along.
Yet to see each such lunatic as unrelated
to the fringe would be a self-deception.
What are they protesting? I only obeyed orders
we gave each other; in fact, followed policies
I never wished to formulate. And long ago tried pacifying,
at random, one dissenter—to find such tactics merely
brought more rabble to the gates. I pass out leaflets
gravely listing all my domino excuses:
self-preservation, commitment, professionality, naiveté.
These go unread by the illiterate protesters.
They are hardly aware of each other, of their own litanies,
and absurdly unmoved by the coffee and sandwiches I send them.
How dare they refuse to settle with me?
I have loved those they claim to represent.
I am owed something.
Who do they think has kept them alive all this time?
See, that old woman whose accusing tears
glow like pearls sewn to her sable jacket,
the fur bought by my childish labor, the tears in payment
for my maturation. And that old man goose-stepping
arrogantly by, flanked by his precious sons—what interest
do I owe such parents who never quite invested
in their child one glance between possession and indifference?
And there, that group with pained, intelligent expressions
and idle hands spotless of ink, paint, blood,
or any brave stain I could infect them with,
disclaiming an envy no abasement of mine would ever ease.
Or look at those who drag their banners, light up cigarettes,
and gossip even at the dedication of their comrades.
They say I should picket for them; I'd do it better.
Now that man all alone, though—he's impressive:
completely naked except for scars he and I carved
together—lovers' initials on a living tree.
He's reasonable, as well, offering to mediate
between me and the others. He even smiles and waves
sometimes, or is that merely pragmatism?
He marches out there still.
At this age surely one half the wait is over.
But if already they have struck with such effectiveness—
a wildcat slowdown of my body, my mind
unable to promote its image, my words pressed
into employment on this page to stutter lies more radical
than any truths—how can this deadlock be resolved
when each year newer converts join their protest?
Even now, an in-depth guilt-survey can prophesy
fresh posters readied, unlegended but grained
with photographs of babies starving in five-color separation,
of un-class-conscious students, of workers justified
in beating up their wives, of miserly redwoods—each tree
hoarding a whole development of Leisure Villages,
of rapists I should try to understand
and victims I must emulate correctly,
and one last black-and-white collectively created graphic:
a bonfire purifying poems of their irrelevance.
Pity, self- or otherwise, scabs the heart at last.
I'd go insane if that would do the trick.
But I'd need them for that, to riot and seize my brain
entirely—and they are not adventuristic opportunists.
I'd kill myself, but they, you see, are unprepared
for self-determination. Someone has to be responsible.
So we wait our revolution out. They give me my small comforts.
They let me write. They help me with my choice of words.
They dictated this, in fact—which means it might get published
and maybe even read by you
as evidence.
THE FATHER
"Girls of your age are the freshest, purest things
Our Blessed Lord has made."
I was just twelve, and fatherless.
The winter carousel
in Central Park was ours. I drank hot chocolate,
he chain-smoked cigarettes.
Books, relics, blessings warmed me
less than his smell, of lime
and incense. I was not Catholic, but he still
held me on his lap,
and sent me flowers on Father's Day.
He was new in my world of women;
my mother and aunts thought him strange but safe,
and useful to our needs.
I wrote him letters every day,
learned Latin with delight,
spent weekends with his parents in the country.
His mother had been dying
since his birth; for forty years
she thrived, patient to outlive
her husband, take sole possession of their son.
His father told Irish jokes
and felt between my legs to warn
me not to let boys touch there.
He never did that. Often we didn't touch
at all, but sat and watched
the space that breathed between our hands.
He said I would outgrow him,
and every birthday, teased my bitterness
at others who, he smiled,
had gone before me, and would follow.
He asked for the frock I had worn
the day we met, and folded it in a box
tied with satin ribbon,
to remember me as a child, I thought.
He called me Princess.
Once, he was drunk, and slapped me in the face.
Years later, married and pregnant,
I saw them in the park one summer afternoon,
his collar cast away
beside her shoes and socks. Her pinafore was stained.
Surprising them, I loomed, a green
round shadow against the sun, and laughed
"You don't know me!" but pity
stung my eyes at her protective anger
for him who, kneeling on the grass,
looked as if he saw heat shimmering with some
dreaded annunciation.
THE VOYEUR
In counterpointed quarrel they play,
trading the victim's and the victor's roles,
I focus on the score, eager to seize
a cadence beyond my view: the harmony
I know, offstage, their silences complete.
Within my walls their voices hum;
their angry figures (slitted by the blind
that with the darkened lamp protects my breed)
deceive me. Their bed is in a farther room.
But they include me in their hate.
Etched on my glass, those furies move
alien to their later, sheeted guise.
Who but a saint would hallow in his praise
temptations he rejects in his dim cave
but needs, to stay inviolate?
They reconcile. Betrayed, my role
is now to strain, a mute within a choir
who mouths dumb hallelujahs, safe to discover
none of his silence for the easy swell
of song that fills his neighbor's throat.
I lose them to that other room
where damned and celebrating still, they gesture.
I draw my blinds against them, but I fear
my body lying open to their rhythms,
their negative still seared upon my sight.
THE COVENANT
(for K.P.)
I see them live behind your gaze—
sister and father, wraithful pair—
and watch you sweat to synthesize
or rend them, year on haunted year.
You, their prison and battlefield,
brother and son who could not cure
the martyr's zeal when once it kindled
the executioner's slow fire.
I feel my vision darken, too:
phantoms lust to breathe our fear.
That pulsing double shape I know;
longing embowels me—I, the liar
who never loved the father-ghost
smiling from masks you never wore.
Your specters age with salted rust
but mine run fresh blood everywhere.
I know how well you loved the maid
who shared that grim paternity—
who died, and rose again, and died
with many men, trusting the lie
her father told her when he slew
her angels. Those same angels bind me
to your suffering now.
My father's lips move when you pray.
Bodies, to brave what dreams dare show,
must recognize each faceless ghost.
Give me my father. I give you
your sister, and procure her rest
from wanting him. So we fulfill
their final promise with our first—
and you and I, who share this hell,
again lose what was always lost.
LOVE POEM OF THE CALENDAR ALPHABET
[In its content, metaphor, and metrics, this poem reflects the structural, symbolic, and numerological values of the ancient Celtic Beth-Luis-Nion Tree Alphabet, as explicated by Robert Graves in The White Goddess.]
Birch-bright are these bodies,
cradling our newborn selves.
Like lightning you impale my heart's red berry;
I study the oracular entrails, still smoking
grey as a rowan fire.
Nursing each other with sweat clear as the snipe's song,
we would drown but for these egos—stout oars of ash;
We are left flooded, silt-fertile.
Fire spirals from us as from hewn alderwood,
whistling like a crimson gull.
Sifting apart, we fall, lost grains through wicker sieves;
the moon owns me, I grieve where the willow mourns,
and yours is the hawk's trial: insight and despair.
Zygotic lover I labor, repeating you
as the thrush stutters the rainbow:
Behold my staff. Where I have struck
or leaned on you, you put forth leaves.
Hold me chastely, as the night-crow grasps terror;
nothing has any value.
Desperate, we signal across two needfires; we are naive
midsummer wrens, battering the door between us.
Twin, which of us is sacrificed? I, the arch, the altar?
or you who cling there, blossoming?
Concentrate of each other in one shell, we solve
the crane's asymmetry.
Quince be your canopy, the garden your refuge,
the unasked question your tether.
I peck at the gleaned field.
Maenad that I am,
I thirst for your vintage self.
Gates open in me; now would I resurrect you
with that love which strikes the blue swan mute.
Gnostic geese, we who dwell empowered
under one roof.
Ripening well into winter, we may yet learn
how our roots entwine and drink at one source:
an elder wisdom, therapeutic, a mutual doom.
And yet, alone, each of us thrived in salt-charged sand;
I had no brother who sought me, as you did
your sister—or am I silvering through her mirror,
a lost Tamar myself, thinking I seek my son?
Our histories are being burnt away, like furze
singed to clear space for fresh sprouts' greening;
we sense our own preparedness for this buzz,
electricate, in our touch.
Uproarious
at last as mountain heather, we arrive;
you are drenched larkspur by this passion
and I am dry of wing—ready, now, to hive.
Entropy, we know, consumes all our consuming, will blaze us
and then bury us—but upright in our graves
if we have earned it, like poplars
exuberant on a darkening autumn hill.
I will not love you then, nor will you care for me,
despite all our intentions—except as our dead mouths
may speak roots subtler than these tongues:
poems probing through the earth-dull ears of others,
gnarling into a single trunk, an utterance.
Joined at such a height,
we gaze at one another undisguised—
this risk dangerous as a fall
toward no certain ground;
this space massing white as distance
which shreds, powerless,
before the glance of
eagles such as we.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lady of the Beasts by Robin Morgan. Copyright © 1976 Robin Morgan. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Publisher's Note,I BLOOD TIES,
Loyalty Oath,
The Father,
The Voyeur,
The Covenant,
Love Poem of the Calendar Alphabet,
II THE CITY OF GOD,
III THE SHUTTLE,
Jottings of a Feminist Activist,
On The Watergate Women,
Portrait of the Artist as Two Young Women,
Frames,
Kings' Gambit,
IV EASTER ISLAND,
V THE OTHER STRAND,
The Two Gretels,
The Pedestrian Woman,
To A Widow,
Survival,
A Ceremony,
VI THE NETWORK OF THE IMAGINARY MOTHER,
VII NORNS,
The Dance of the Seven Veils,
The Spider Woman,
The Mermaid,
The Beggar Woman,
La Doña Sebastiana,
VIII VOICES FROM SIX TAPESTRIES,
About the Author,