THE WOMAN IN SUNSHINE

It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor the end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is -

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.

- Wallace Stevens

While this poem is not really about Brigid, it made me think a little bit about her, she being the Goddess who brings the warm spark of inspiration, the forge, and the quickening of the Earth in early Spring. But more than that, this poem makes me think about the Goddess who is in each woman, particularly in myself. I've been writing a lot about shining one's personal light and living in the power as one who has divine within, and this poem speaks to me of that.

Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite poets ever. He has such a way with words, that Wallace. Here's another poem, apropos of nothing. As I read it, it makes me think of a man who has fallen hopelessly in love with a Faery Queen.

BOUQUET OF BELLE SCAVOIR

I
It is she alone that matters.
She made it. It is easy to say
The figures of speech, as why she chose
This dark, particular rose.

II
Everything in it is herself.
Yet the freshness of the leaves, the burn
Of the colors, are tinsel changes,
Out of the changes of both light and dew

III
How often had he walked
Beneath summer and the sky
To receive her shadow into his mind . . .
Miserable that it was not she.

IV
The sky is too blue, the earth too wide.
The thought of her takes her away.
The form of her in something else
Is not enough.

V
The reflection of her here, and then there,
Is another shadow, another evasion,
Another denial. If she is everywhere,
She is nowhere, to him.

VI
But this she has made. If it
Another image, it is one she has made.
It is she that he wants, to look at directly,
Someone before him to see and to know.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:10 AM