Stolen

Stolen

Before you were my daughter come into the world,

before you were even born,

you were promised to the darkness

deep beneath my giving earth.

I never knew

what one brother had promised to another,

I never knew

what great Zeus had promised to dark Hades:

I never knew.

Now you have been taken.

Perhaps a part of you went all-knowing

because your soul already knew

what was necessary:

the abduction of the self

the rape of the soul

the violence which comes with transformation

the violence that is necessary for separation

from me, from your mother.

And so for me begins a new state of being:

A new silence, like no silence I have known.

A trifle: a handful of pomegranate seeds

sealed your fate forever:

my child, you are now in Hades' world
and his realm is not mine. 
I, Demeter, who am mother to the earth itself

have had my motherhood stolen from me.

Now my own earth knows my rage
now the dry soil cracks with grief,

now Autumn has come in Spring:

new leaves wither and die in bud,

birds fall silent, fields lie fallow,

and I, the Mater Creatrix, rule a waste land.

Where are you, my daughter,
living out your shadow life
in the dark lands far beneath my feet?
Do you still live,
or are you now a shade among shades?
Where are you, my changed one?
Where are you, my Persephone? 

Gust of Wind by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer