This is a poem I wrote at the time of Journey Into Courage
Blood & Stone
“Blood welled up among the roots, on its way to the world of men, and in the dark it looked as hard as stone. Nothing else was red.” Rilke, Orpheus. Euridice. Hermes
I want to write a poem, and I don’t know how to do it.
There is an ache in my heart and I don’t know how to explore it,
give it form, let it unfold like a flower. Or blood seeping from a
volcano.
There is violence here and so much pain.
Rilke describes the underworld, blood at the roots of stones.
Blood and stones.What is this pain that is so deep inside.
I’ve bruised myself against your stony silence.
I am open and vulnerable in my need for love, in my childish
attempts to make it better, take your pain away, do
something, anything that might win from you a smile.
I offer you my heart’s blood and you remain a stone.
Blind, you crush my eager efforts to show you who I am.
Slowly, gradually, I learn to close and harden.
It was someone else you wanted.Mommy and Daddy, if I cut myself and wrote you in blood
would you listen?Blood at the root.
Blood seeking a path among the stones.
This is my life, bleeding away in hard dark places, among the
cold faces.
Wanting to flower and not knowing how.
November 1991