[Thespiritexpress] Poem Sorcerers's Houses

[lee michel alley]

Wow, Riantee, that’s quite the epic journey!
Love and blessings,
Lee

> On Aug 24, 2023, at 8:05 AM, Riantee Rand via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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