Poetry Quote: "Invocation," a Poem by Kathleen Raine
April 22, 2008 03:39 AM EDT
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I woke up this morning with the two last lines of this poem going through my mind. After some searching, I found the poem....
Invocation
There is a poem on the way,
There is a poem all around me,
The poem is in the near future,
The poem is in the upper air
Above the foggy atmosphere
It hovers, a spirit
That I would make incarnate.
Let my body sweat
Let snakes torment my breast
My eyes be blind, ears deaf, hands distraught
Mouth parched, uterus cut out,
Belly slashed, back lashed,
Tongue slivered into thongs of leather
Rain stones inserted in my breasts,
Head severed,
If only the lips may speak,
If only the god will come.
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Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was an Engllsh poet of nature, myth, and philosophy. She was the author of fifteen books of poetry, seven books of literary essays, and four books of autobiography. I was privileged to discover her work when I went to London on a summer study program in 1976. She is one of my very favorite poets and thinkers, ever seeing the eternal beyond what appears temporal. This poem is from her first collection, Stone and Flower, published in 1943, and also appears in The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine, published in 2001.
That said--I had forgotten how very visceral this poem is. Would it pass the standards of political correctness these days, lol?! Yet we all know that longing to bring forth poetry or other writing; to be the mouthpiece of a god. Writing takes patience and hard work, and the waiting and the work can be both arduous and painful.....
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Comments: 12
A nice poem for National Poetry Month
Bhawana, I am honored by your words.
BTW..thank you for your comments to my poem of Liberty..you have invigorated my take on that piece,,and no I did NOT know that fact..