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Persephone, What Prayer
for
Rainer Maria Rilke
Persephone, what prayer do I hear you pray,
as the god
of the netherworld sweeps you away?
Orpheus,
if as of winter you
once lost
Persephone, pray, I ask you once,
why this
low lament?
Tracing
themselves in foam as long as blue,
the waves
rush hush against the shore
where I
also hear alone
your
lyre's strains as though
you might
have saved Persephone
from
Hades' shadowed halls,
and you
too
might have
redeemed her long sad soul
from
November's realms.
If, on
this dusky shoal
hard by
the roaring Aegean
you may have glimpsed there wash,
though
only once, one trillium in autumn,
if you
will have watched it still
afloat,
though shrivelling fast,
if now the
frosted surf will not
as yet
have gone and claimed it on the Aegean's bier,
will not
have madly quashed
her
corset's bloom too fair,
fallen
from Persephone's bosom,
will it
have really blossomed out of season?
Orpheus, I
see no reason.
Come then,
lyricist, and clasp your young bride's veil,
where with
April's bowers you both laugh to your
avail.
Richard Vallance
is the Chairperson, Ottawa Chapter,of the Canadian Poetry Association and the editor
of The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 2005.
Home Page
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Email: Richard Vallance
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