[Thespiritexpress] Poem Sorcerers's Houses

[Riantee Rand]

This poem in which I am revisiting my ancestry is not a recent one. 
I read it to the group, (with some staggering) because it had to do with facing my guilt and finding its redemption. 
Here I added the first part of the poem which I didn’t read because it made it too long, but the second part can only make sense in the light of it.

> 
> Sorcerers’ Houses – Italy
> One
>  
> In our ancestral village,
> the houses of sorcerers have no mirrors:
> looking into the reflecting glass perpetrates the human lie,
> arrests the dreamtime that flows from the womb
> and opens windows to other possibilities of being.
>  
> I was told that male sorcerers are no longer men.
> They give up their balls in trade for that womb
> which is their passage out of pointed beliefs.
> Shoved out of the known universe,
> they land into open-breasted knowledge.
>  
> "Information is stored in bone and stone,"
> the sorcerers in our mountain villages caution us.
> The dream sorceress, la strega,
> inform me that the cousin I love
> had a twin sister who died the day they were born.
>  
> It released him from the ancestral spell of ossification.
> Now as I labor to purify the lie out of my cells,
> ever so slowly,
> he invites our twin sister
> to come from the future and correct our past.
>  
> My Mother Specter – France
> Two
>  
> Today I am alone roaming the fall countryside
> spiked with sunflower stalks left over from recent harvest.
> As I walk across turned up fields, across fallow lands
> and reach the drenched vineyards holding on to their grapes,
> I remember the dream of rivers flowing
> from my mother's body to mine.
>  
> I pick fossils from deep furrows, I listen to the song of the rock,
> and my mother's specter is here by my side,
> leaving on the darkening sky a place paler than the rest.
> "Autumn has turned up what was buried deep,"
> she says in her voiceless way.
> Pointing towards the wind she accuses
> the gentle ferocity herding threatening clouds
> and plotting the dreary season.
>  
> "See how it was for me all those winters
> alone,
> under frost's spell,
> without sun,
> without you my daughter,
> only blizzards, storms and death's prospect pounding on my door.
> I have been so lonely ever since you deserted me.
>  
> “An only daughter
> who left me by myself
> to die a lonely death
> in unfriendly regions,
> far from my homeland.
>  
> Disregarding my cautions,
> she joined sorcerers
> in their houses of games
> and rode a lonely wind
> to gather up lost twins.
>  
> "Here, in this garden of France
> after crops are gathered and hunting is over,
> all doors are shut tight;
> there is no longer room for human compassion.
> the lonely can die alone,
> they are shaped by their fears,
> their pain the result of too much indulgence.
>  
>             "There you go again,
>             on the traces of faded flowers and lost men's poetry.
>             Stay away from them, their dis-ease is catching.
>             No my daughter,
>             I won't have you roam the misty countryside
>             looking for ecstasy.
>             Love is the flower of the beaten path
>             and anyone who cares to bend can find it.
>  
> “Don’t try to make your way on this trail of fugitive impressions;
> it vanishes as you go.
> The mirror you used to call your twin is now broken,
> I cut myself on its edges.
> My faint heart failed to soar and my destiny fell short of wisdom.
>  
> “Please stop the dreaming,
> forget that flickering light,
> that whirl of wild energy pushing you
> beyond the autumn fields
> into spheres where dark entities prey on you.
>  
> “I saw them staring at you in your darkened room,
> I saw them dense and muscular,
> curling around your chest on moonless nights.
> Do you remember, soon after I died,
> when the psychic octopus prevented your journeying spirit
> from reentering the shelter of your deserted body? 
> Do you remember how the life force leaked
> from your chest into the mouth of the beast? 
> I was the one who ripped the demon off you.
>  
> "Go home now, my daughter,
> build yourself a fire.
> This winter doesn't promise another spring,
> you will have to make your own.
> Forget your boy cousin, forget your father's tribe,
> the high cheek bones,
> the Italian houses made of stone.
>  
> Sunflowers are withered.
> Don't you know?
> That's what killed Van Gogh.
>  
> ‘Come, sit with me by the fire. 
> Give up poets, sorcerers, and those failed magicians,
> the philosophers. 
> Turn on the light and sing to me,
> begin the weaving,
> the embroidery,
> the knitting.
>  
> Work with me on the cloth of the ordinary.
> forgive my loneliness,
> forgive your quest,
>  
> forgive the eyes your ancestors gave you,
>  
> please forgive me
> as you forgive yourself,
> forgive
>                                                       forgive. . .”

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