Hello Friends,
The central character in today's poem by Rita Dove is arguably Persephone, though she is never mentioned by name. Persephone is out gathering flowers when she is abducted to the underworld and raped by Hades — who thinks that he loves her, but takes her by force. Persephone's mother is Demeter, the greek goddess of harvest and fertility, and she is so furious and distraught about her daughter that she causes all the crops to fail. Demeter regains hope and joy when Persephone returns to earth (on Zeus's order), and life springs anew and crops flourish. But before she returns, Hades tricks Persephone into eating some pomegranate seeds, and because she has tasted food in the underworld, she is required to spend a third of each year (the winter months) with Hades as his queen of the underworld. The myth of Persephone explains the cycle of seasons and crops, and embodies the close ties between death and fertility.
In today's poem, Rita Dove imagines the voice of the mother Demeter addressing her daughter's rapist and husband Hades. In some sense, in can be read as a mother's address to all males about their responsibility for the male-dominated nature of the world that she must send her daughter out into.
Enjoy.
Ellen
This alone is what I wish for you: knowledge.
To understand each desire and its edge,
to know we are responsible for the lives
we change. No faith comes without cost,
no one believes without dying.
Now for the first time
I see clearly the trail you planted,
what ground opened to waste,
though you dreamed a wealth
of flowers.
There are no curses, only mirrors
held up to the souls of gods and mortals.
And so I give up this fate, too.
Believe in yourself,
go ahead—see where it gets you.
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