Sibyl & Her Miseries

"Whatever is flesh or fleshlike is vulnerable. The mark of body is its ability to be pierced and bitten, to be prety to snakes, lightning flashes, lovers."

Martha Nussbaum, The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of Plato's Symposium

"There is no voice but is born of Me
I am there is no other God beside
Before Me all that live shall bow the knee." - John Very, "The Message"

"Wilt thou not visit me?
The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew;
And every blade of grass I see,
From thy deep earth its moisture grew." - John Very, "The Prayer"

"The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit" by Brenda Wineapple, NYRB

Prairie Madness

"Prairie madness or prairie fever was an affliction that affected European settlers in the Great Plains during their migration to, and settlement of, the Canadian Prairies and the Western United States in the 19th century. Settlers moving from urbanized or relatively settled areas in the East faced the risk of mental breakdown caused by the harsh living conditions and the extreme levels of isolation on the prairie. Symptoms of prairie madness included depression, withdrawal, changes in character and habit, and violence. Prairie madness sometimes resulted in the afflicted person moving back East or, in extreme cases, suicide." (from Wikipedia).

"The Helmsman" by H.D.

"O be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks.
we pastured them in hollows,
cut off from the wind
and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland—
we stepped past wood-flowers,
we forgot your tang,
we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills
through oak and scrub-oak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramble-fruit
in our hair: we laughed
as each branch whipped back,
we tore our feet in half-buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot—we worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leaf-mould and earth,
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us—

and the feel of the clefts in the bark,
and the slope between tree and tree—
and a slender path strung field to field
and wood to wood
and hill to hill
and the forest after it.

We forgot—for a moment
tree-resin, tree-bark,
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to taste.

We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass—
in the shorter grass—
we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs—hesitates—drops—
climbs—hesitates—crawls back—
climbs—hesitates—
O, be swift—
we have always known you wanted us."

books & short stories

• "The Erl-King" by Angela Carter
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"When she felt first the fire of love burning in her breast, she was afraid thereof, and then our Lord answered to her mind and said, 'Daughter, be not afraid, for this heat is the heat of the Holy Ghost, which shall burn away all your sins, for the fire of love quenches all sins. And you shall understand by this token that the Holy Ghost is in you, and you know well wherever the Holy Ghost is, there is the Father, and where the Father is, there is the Son, and so you have fully in your soul all the Holy Trinity. Therefore you have great cause to love me right well, and yet you shall have greater cause than ever you had to love me, for you shall hear what you never heard, and you shall see what you never saw, and you shall feel what you never felt.'"

- Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

"Marsh Languages" by Margaret Atwood

The dark soft languages are being silenced:
Mothertongue Mothertongue Mothetongue
falling one by one back into the moon.

Language of marshes,
language of the roots of rushes tangled
together in the ooze,
marrow cells twinning themselves
inside the warm core of the bone:
pathways of hidden light in the body fade and wink out.

The sibilants and gutturals,
the cave languages, the half-light
forming at the back of the throat,
the mouth’s damp velvet moulding

The lost syllable for ‘I’ that did not mean separate,
all are becoming sounds no longer
heard because no longer spoken,
and everything that could once be said in them has
ceased to exist

The languages of the dying suns
are themselves dying,
but even the word for this has been forgotten.
The mouth against skin, vivid and fading,
Can no longer speak both cherishing and farewell.
It is now only a mouth, only skin.
There is no more longing.

Translation was never possible.
instead there was always only
conquest, the influx
of the language of hard nouns,
the language of metal,
the language of either/or,
the one language that has eaten all others.