TUESDAY POETRY "Nykteris"

Nykteris

“… from dusk they take their name, and flit by night" ~Ovid*

From dusk, the hour, stolen stole
a means by which a shape is lost & hid
Phersephassa** stolen, too, once green
and new and hid from light
now everything awakens to the flight

a voice begins as if in wings
tiny sounds in parchment stir and sting
tiny-sized and Hermes-seized declare
the time is now to climb and ride the air
they fashion what a shape in loss returns
dusk, the hour, stolen, stolen bright
and everything awakens to the night 

©2013 “Nykteris” stephanie pope mythopoetry.com


notes

 *Ovid, “Metamorphoses” 4. 422 ff
 **Perse’phone, a goddess giving  meaning a subtle manner
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=persephone-bio-1)
(Περσεφόνη), in Latin Proserpina, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. (Hom. Il. 14.326, Od. 11.216; Hes. Theog. 912, &c. ; Apollod. 1.5.1.) Her name is commonly derived from φερειν φόνον, "to bring" or "cause death," and the form Persephone occurs first in Hesiod (Hes. Th. 913; comp. Horn. Hymm. in Cer. 56), the Homeric form being Persephoneia. But besides these forms of the name, we also find Persephassa, Phersephassa, Persephatta, Phersephatta. Pherrephassa, Pherephatta, and Phersephoneia, for which various etymologies have been proposed. The Latin Proserpina, which is probably only a corruption of the Greek, was erroneously derived by the Romans from proscrpere,"to shoot forth." (Cic. de Nat. Deor. 2.26.) Being the infernal goddess of death, she is also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx (Apollod. 1.3.1 ); in Arcadia she was worshipped under the name of Despoena, and was called a daughter of Poseidon, Hippius, and Demeter, and said to have been brought up by the Titan Anytus. (Paus. 8.37.3, 6, 25.5.) Homer describes her as the wife of llades, and the formidable, venerable, and majestic queen of the Shades, who exercises her power, and carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead, along with her husband. (Hom. Od. 10.494, 11.226, 385, (134, Il. 9.457, 569; comp. Apollod. 1.9.15.) Hence she is called by later writers Juno Inferna, Auerna, and Stygia (Verg. A. 6.138; Ov. Met. 14.114), and the Erinnyes are said to have been daughters of her by Pluto. (Orph. Hymn. 29. 6, 6, 70. 3.) Groves sacred to her are said by Homer to be in the western extremity of the earth, on the frontiers of the lower world, which is itself called the house of Persephone. (Od. 10.491, 509.)

ON MYTHOPOESES & CREATIVITY PLAYING THE OTHER................. ~Lines For David Miller

Silence as negation…as a fantasized potential, a not-yet-articulated fullness of speech…one of the key distinguishing features…the acting out of paradox. –Elleke Boehmer, Stories of Women , p.131


Where you gathered the line
poetized with seem and think
forgetful of being,  thought that felt itself
seamed again a so-ing term just how.

And where, in gathered words, the poetized
whatness had nowhere-ness to it, the mythic
deep, sweet scent betrayed also the eddy
you never spoke to me to speak the way it did
a silence like the roar of the sea in the shell of the ear.

Negate the negation and where the line gathers
is left in wakened, drunken foam the wrecked poem
negation by negation, wine-darkened is its d-calmed
position (oh, the ghosting, dull, dead, dee composition!)
rendering where I gather the line into me and where
fluid gathering separates out in poetic remains
my psyche's "psyche" gathering lines for her.
                                ***

And where you gathered for her, entering the work, too
(enter the work from anywhere, you said)
you suspended belief in things to gather this around you
teach me, friend, the way you cannot bare it
I will tell you, too the way I cannot share it
how waxing red gathers my scar’s fading amethyst in blue
a wine-darkened post-colonial skin not unlike your smithee
“bloom-like” flesh still glowing of its own accord in how
(an artistic interface, a signature in the para-work for sure!)
or... how unbloom-like and dissed this seamless entry seems
(an O! —Phersephassa’s laughless stone.)

But where, in grace and ghost, already entered and left
in this word is a word eclipsed, one not quite “here” where
each psyche’s poetic presence might also have come to presence
(born a second time as it will have been, from the belly of the pater-matter)
having played the other in a space gotten round
(an in/can/dee-essence the now “embodied absence” signs.)


From here another world must come.


©2007-2013 PLAYING THE OTHER: Lines For David Miller; On Mythopoeses and Creativity  stephanie pope, White Stocking Tales Poetry Series mythopoetry.com

This poem is dedicated to Maggie Macary, Ph.D. (1954-2006)

____________________________notes


THOUGHT TO PONDER active imagining in syllables and in conspectu mortis
or the transcendant function in middle "dee"


First memories of loving come to me in a hush, and by each of them I am undone a little, while there in the each of them, the mine within me continues to hide. Undone, I grow dull like the letter "dee" hiding within the configuration of that word. And, because in this moment it is love that seems to die a little through the story inside me, I sometimes feel just like that dull "dee" hiding inside the voice of its own name. "I love you" I say to that felt silence. And then I die a little, too, just so the unone of my lovestory can live again--even if just for this little while.

(Stephanie Pope, April, 2002)