A recorded reading of the poem below may be listened to here.
BLACK, Sylvia Eden
I have come to this old field, bristled with thorns, with wilting tall grasses and a dog’s grave, to be with her. I wait for her. It is raining and murk-black. A cloud is dying here— I sit and let it cry onto my skin. Her owl-face appears, sunlessly glimmering, Giant as the birds of prehistory, And she opens her mouth to me. She gathers me like a baby in her beak and Tosses her head up in hungry rhapsody and Welcomes me into her throat. Here, it is the first cave, dripping, silent, Stalactite-toothed: my body hurts and weeps, Is peeled away, is eaten flesh. “I think you’ve swallowed me before. Is every dark cave your throat? Is the heavy sea-floor your womb?” “Yes, and yes, and yes. All in the dark is mine. I am the hidden moon and the blood which falls down your legs. I am the soil-bed of all things: warm, wet, Hungry for seed, writhing with worms. I am the Mother at the bottom of the well, Waiting for each of you there.” Her burning bowel wretches me up and out. I am a pellet of fur and bone, Infused with living light. She is my God.
The above poem was written in response to an entirely different ritual process, with different aims and ends, over a year before the project recounted below.
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