February 1, 2002 Candlemas
Bronze Goddess Speaks
By Deborah DeNicola
There is too much woundedness out the window and insidethe TV where the guards secure this blank room. Too much
pain trickling from the faucet in the Toilette where water
will be the next thing these humans horde.
I can see from my boat they are a sad lot, and sinking.
In 5000 years, life after life, no one has learned
a thing about love. It is a fine ideal for me to sit
in the archeological museum in Dijon where stillness is
sanctioned by the embalmed air. Still, I am here
to overhear words and inspire new histories.
But even as legions pass, their thoughts flare in my hooded eyes
like 20th century weapons. Their tears deliver so much salt
each morning that birds convulse in the summer heat
while insects evolve new powers. One young woman
craves love, another success. And though the men scarcely stop
to look me over, their hunger resonates in my thighs
like the telluric lines scattered through places
where my body hatches light.
One dreadfully thin girl asks for peace so quietly
she doesn't hear the scream in her voice,
while all the Mother's estranged daughters beg
for courage to bear the world. Because I am
ancient, most show respect, yet some
would just as soon trade me on the black market.
Still others believe I can help and those help themselves
by believing. The idea that I listen is beside the point.
Belief is the point, though I am no longer what
they think I am -- and so tired of soaking in wishes
like oils of Roman baths. Dug up from earth,
I remind them where they will return.
Once I was charged terra but lost all strength
when wrenched from that sacred well, one of hundreds
over which Gothic churches were built. What I know continues
unchanged but changes nothing. If only they knew
how powerful the earth, how free they are to love it --
they might stop punishing themselves.
Deborah DeNicola edited the anthology Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology published in April 1999 from The University Press of New England. She was awarded a Poetry Fellowship in 1997 from the National Endowment for the Arts, received The William T. Foley Award from America in 2000, The Barbara Bradley Award in 1996 from The New England Poetry Club and a Special Mention from The Pushcart Prizes 1992. She is the author of Where Divinity Begins (Alice James Press 1994) and two chapbooks, Psyche Revisited (1992) chosen by Brendan Galvin as the winner of the Embers Magazine Chapbook Contest and Rainmakers (Coyote Love Press 1984). Deborah DeNicola's poems and reviews have been published in numerous journals such as The North American Review, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Fiction International, The Journal, The Boston Book Review, and Orion among others. Deborah has been a Bread Loaf Scholar (1993), and has received fellowships and scholarships from The MacDowell Colony (1994), The Centrum Foundation (1995), The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1997), and The Vermont Studios (1999).