Sample poems from THE THRONE OF PSYCHE Mercer University Press, 2011

Marly Youmans

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful thanks to the editors who accepted or requested the poems in this collection for first publication and reprints: A Child at the Tropic Pavilions: Mythic Passages A Dutch Burgher: The Raintown Review A Fire in Ice: The Raintown Review After Storm: Electric Velocipede At Cullowhee: The HyperTexts At Prentiss Cottage: The Raintown Review Blurbs of the Poets (1st section): Mezzo Cammin Botticelli: qarrtsiluni Celan: Books & Culture Childbirth, or the Forest of Death: The Eclectic Muse Children of Paradise: Cold Mountain Review; reprinted in Cold Mountain Review 35th Anniversary Issue Dream of a Waltz with God: The Deronda Review Godspell, or December Triptych: Mythic Passages Gulf: Mythic Passages Heard in the Dying Year: Mythic Passages Her Girlhood: Mezzo Cammin Here We Go Round: Mezzo Cammin Hyfrydol: The Eclectic Muse In Extremis: storySouth Memory of Youth: Electric Velocipede Mending Nets: Mythic Passages Near the End of the World: Unsplendid Nihongan Altar: Books & Culture; reprinted in The HyperTexts Parable of Dust: The Raintown Review Psyche Enthroned: Mezzo Cammin Psyche in Hell: Mezzo Cammin Rue for A. E. Housman: Books & Culture Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 2: Mezzo Cammin Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 4: Mezzo Cammin Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 5: qarrtsiluni Snow White in Wildwood: Mezzo Cammin Some Other Things I Hated About the 20th Century: Oyster Boy Review Southern to the Bone: storySouth Spell for Raine: Mythic Passages Stones in the Wilderness: Mezzo Cammin Syrinx Song: Mezzo Cammin Continued

Tears of a Boy, Age 6: Books & Culture The Angel with the Broken Face: The HyperTexts The Artist as Hephaestus: Mythic Passages The Artist of God: Books & Culture The Black Flower: storySouth The Devils Curse on Women: Common Thread / Common Ground: A Collection of Essays on Early Samplers and Historical Needlework, ed. Marsha Van Valin (Sullivan, Wisconsin: The Scarlet Letter, 2001) The Exiles Track: storySouth The Fall: Mythic Passages The Fire Girl: Lady Churchills Rosebud Wristlet The Ghost Crabs Woman: Electric Velocipede; reprinted in Off the Coastal Path (U.K.: Stanza Press of P. S. Publishing, 2010) The Gulls: Electric Velocipede The Kirkyard Deer: The Eclectic Muse The Library Pictures: Mythic Passages The Marriage Bed: Mezzo Cammin The Moon on the Strand: Electric Velocipede The Nesting Doll: McSweeneys Internet Tendency The Sea of Traherne: Books & Culture; reprinted in The HyperTexts The Sky Door: Electric Velocipede The Starflower: Mythic Passages The Tithonus Variations: Mythic Passages Two Incidents of Curiosity: Mezzo Cammin When Demons Ruled: Electric Velocipede Why the People Disliked Art, Circa 2005: Electric Velocipede Zephyr: Mezzo Cammin

CONTENTS Poems marked in red are in this selection

THE THRONE OF PSYCHE

The Throne of Psyche I. Her Girlhood II. Zephyr III. The Marriage Bed IV. Two Incidents of Curiosity V. Syrinx Song VI. Psyche in Hell VII. Psyche Enthroned

THE EXILES TRACK

The Exiles Track Southern to the Bone When Demons Ruled Here We Go Round The Nesting Doll The Black Flower The Devils Curse on Women A Fire in Ice Childbirth, or The Forest of Death Children of Paradise Some Other Things I Hated About the Twentieth Century The Fall The Angel with the Broken Face In Extremis Snow White in Wildwood

EARTH-DWELLERS
Rue for A. E. Housman Celan The Artist of God Continued

Godspell, or December Triptych Botticelli The Fire Girl Parable of Dust A Dutch Burgher The Sea of Traherne Spell for Raine The Tithonus Variations Gulf At Cullowhee

ARCHIPELAGOS
Near the End of the World The Sky Door The Ghost Crabs Woman The Gulls The Moon on the Strand Memory of Youth After Storm Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 2 Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 4 Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 5 The Artist as Hephaestus Why the People Disliked Art, circa 2005

THRESHOLDS
Tears of a Boy, Age 6 Blurbs of the Poets A Child at the Tropic Pavilions Dream of a Waltz with God Heard in the Dying Year The Library Pictures Mending Nets The Kirkyard Deer At Prentiss Cottage Nihongan Altar The Starflower Stones in the Wilderness Hyfrydol

3 sections from the 7-part THE THRONE OF PSYCHE

THE THRONE OF PSYCHE A souls mysterious as any tree It drives a root as deadly low as hell, It stretches peaceful branches heaven-high, It harvests light with leaves of memory. I. HER GIRLHOOD You see the limestone wall that catches light Those olive trees inside the circuit of stone? The gardeners said the eldest one had passed Three thousand years. It looks as gnarled and scarred As rind from dragons that survived a war, And underneaths the spot where I was born, The Queen my mother snatched by sudden pains While walking in the garden. I looked up And saw the sun like showered stars in leaves. You think I cant remember? Yes, I can; And I remember breeze and branches tossed, The olive shifting, singing down at me, Saying I was Psyche, blessed and blessing I made a cry and Mother laughed in joy And drew her knife across the bloody cord. A Queen is busy like an ant whose nest Is shattered open by a curious Small child: the tree became a family, A secret place to go and talk or hide. I ate her fruit, I drank her bitter teas When I was ill, and someone carved a doll Fleshed in olive wood from wind-thrown branches. The greenish face with streaks of yellow-brown Made me daydream strangers from another World where sky was rose and water purple. In ours, my sisters married parched old kings To give my father fine alliances; I scaled the tree and heard an oracle Foretell I would not bear a fate like theirs. The courtiers made me abashed with praise That I was fair, the people offered gifts As though I were a goddess from the sky. I grew afraid and gods grew angry, as They willyet why, since time is always on Their side? I clambered up my olive tree And harkened to the auguring of leaves:

Id have a fate called strange and wonderful. But messengers approached my fathers throne To tell how I must be a sacrifice To temper Aphrodites jealousy. A monster tarried on the mountaintop, My promised bridegroomwinged and scaled from sole To crown, the color of a stormy cloud But hard as armor from the gods own forge. I thought of sisters, queens in jeweled crowns, Of truce between security and looks And guessed perhaps there was more than one way To be consumed. All gossiped I would be A morsel for my bridegrooms evening feed; My mother shrieked, my father slashed his robes, Our people raised a mighty swell of grief. I tipped the polished bronze from side to side But could not find why such a fate was mine A face in metal or in water is A dim and shining thing. I clambered up And listened to more prophecy of leaves, How I would shiver like an olive branch Before I tasted fate, how I was meant To be unlike all others of my world, How I would grow as radiant as a tree Below the burning chariot of sun. So when the peoples loud procession came, I did not cry or flee. I bound my doll Of greenish olive wood into my sash And climbed past aloes to the mountaintop, Walking as if between two founts of tears: My mother and father, for whom I tried To be a comforter despite my dread, Though all the while I gripped the olive wood That lived three thousand years, as if the luck Of living long might sink into my palm And shin a tree of blood up to my heart. I was sixteen the night I watched the court And people winding like a starry snake Down the mountains flank to town or palace, And wept as one by one the torches died. It seems a thousand years ago to me And only instants: how my courage flared Or failed at noises in the wilderness I could not speak for dread of the unknown.

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On my last morning of familiar things, Id flung my arms around the rugged trunk, And leaves had fluttered message in my ear: Inside you is a beauty left untouched By thrones or the admiring throngs of men, And seeking at your girlhoods door is love, A glistering monster and a child of light, A mountain errand dark with mystery, A loveliness that springs up from a seed Those leaves of fire, that bright enchanted tree.

III. THE MARRIAGE BED And if the palace seemed bewitching, how Much more the bed, a marvel of the gods Like nothing for an earthly king and queen, A lustrous treasure box packed up in silks, Four-legged, each leg a tree of ebony. As shadows slid across the windowsills, Collecting in the corners of the room, The trees began to send out wands and leaves, Darkening the air with gleaming branches. Whoever saw such freedom from the laws Of earth? I stared, forgot to tremble in My wonder as new tendrils wove a maze Above a bed that glistened, beetle-black. Unseen hands drew dusk across the portal And windows, carried off the glowing lamp, And strewed fresh petals on the inlaid floor. If this was how my promised husbands house Received his bride, perhaps the feathered snake for so Apollos oracle foretold Could be more beautiful than I had dreamed, If flying terror could be beautiful. Shade took the room until I could not see. A mimic springtime blossomed on each branch As tiny stars shone out, began to crawl And sometimes blink like phosphorescent bugs. I fell asleep and shinned the olive tree That waxed inside my mothers garden walls And heard a crinkling of the leaves that spoke Oracular to me of love and fate, But where was dream and where the waking world I hardly knew, and when the feathered snake Came wooing with eternal promises, I let him hold me in his arms that seemed More like a mans than like a serpents grasp. Yet fear is strange: at times he seemed all scales That snagged against the linen of my gown, At times he seemed as yielding as a child. I woke to find that what I dreamed was true The rustle of his wings was like the leaves, The arms that pinned me close were like a mans, Although no man could emanate such fire, A darkness glowing in the chambers pitch.

But what did I, long sheltered in my home, Know of the ways of monsters or of men? A tree of nerves sprang into trembling life Inside this body that the world desired But never knewthe starry insects swarmed Among the maze of limbs and multiplied Until the dark was pricked with flecks of light That gave no seeing to my open eyes. The snake kept winding on the tree of me I flashed with nervous fire from root to leaf And shivered as my gown was tugged aside. A rush of wood: new saplings broke the floor And forested the chamber, wild with growth. The room dissolved as floor was changed to earth And roof transformed to sky and swarming stars. In midnights wilderness my lover struck Asunder all my childhoods innocence The little stars went shrieking through the wood As jet-black trees contracted, splintered, fell. I lay within a nest of shattered twigs. A shape with wings was sobbing on my breast, Some wall between us battered down to dust. I touched the face invisible to me. His serpent pinions beat convulsively.

VI. PSYCHE IN HELL My former life was but a shade that drank The blood of memory to speak the past; Id suffered change to something radiant And strange even to me. Likewise the world Came streaming with a light I never knew And bent its brute affections to my call When Aphrodite tortured me with trials, The glinting ants divided grain by kind, The Syrinx-reeds confessed a secret way To pluck the golden fleece from animals That boiling sun transforms to demonkind, And birds scooped droplets from the mouth of Styx. But I despaired when Aphrodite sent Me to fetch a store of hellish beauty I might have ended as my sisters did, Plunging quick from mountain-crest to Hades, But stones cried out to save me from that fate, And gravelled voices told the mystery Of how to forge through death, return to sun. I packed the coins for Charon, honey cakes, The box that Aphrodite tossed; I braved The sulphur vents, the noise, volcanic sprouts Of flame that shot from earth like molten trees, And then I slipped inside the throat of Hell. They are not wrong who talk of grotesque imps And beasts that howl and bristle on the path. I reached the jet-black artery of flood And shuddered as old Charon pocketed The passage-coin: my death seemed near to me, And so I craved the world of light and trees, Shrinking from the dead who moan and flutter In search of something, something they have lost. I pitched the dog a sop of honey cake To keep his three heads locked in quarreling And passed inside the black-thorned palace gates. As in a bitter glass, Persephone Seemed meimagine if my love was lord Of night and fire, volcanic in his moods And half in love with deep oblivion, Instead of being bright and frolicsome. She wanted me to stay; she begged me eat And offered jewels of pomegranate seeds

That I refused. A darkness clung to me On my return, and whisperings of love Disturbed my thought. I clutched the beauty box That now was laden, though it had been light, Endured the weight of hell like wings of lead Dragging at my backstumbled on till sun Danced incandescent on my face and skin, And settled like new wings on shoulder blades.

5 poems from the section,

THE EXILES TRACK

THE EXILES TRACK

At midnight I went down to the lake, and there I saw the Northern Lights as seven swords Of long-dead kings that glimmered in the sky. They were as thin and cold as icicles, Set evenly above a shoal of cloud The winters glittering eyes drew low to see, Its glories made into one burning look. I stepped onto the marble arrowhead That points the way to North forevermore, And though I stood below a canopy Close-crowded with the bright burrs of the stars, And though I held my love, and though our children Were safe and sleeping at my back, I met And knew a loneliness beyond all heal. A silvery voice arose out of the spires, Out of the darks offhanded elegance: You gave your heart away, oh, long ago, So theres no helpnow you must bide in frost, And when you die, the reapers men will scar The ground for your grave, or else will burn your limbs And bury the ash in a wall of stone.

SOUTHERN TO THE BONE

1. To explainas if she could! She says: When I was young And passing fair and strong Like a girl in a fairy tale, I ran from God and angels. I flew to dark powers --Though they arent dark but seeming-light, With glamour on them like the fey And I frisked with the demons on the hills, Then curled to sleep against their thighs, A wing along my bow-bent spine. I woke, dappled with dew. And found that they had picked Me clean of clothes and more, Treasures dear to me. I was bereft. I was: weakness. All-conquering. The rains Began.

2. She says: Rain is rain is rain. This was no rain but light, Or not light but arrowy Fine peltings of a fire Shot slantwise through the skin Until I could not tell What was me from rain Or light, and river waves Not-rain-or-light-or-fire Swamped me until I drowned And washed into the sea, To drift with sailor boys Past luminous weeds and fish Unto the roots of the world.

3. Dont ask her any more What Southern really means, Or why we just cant quit Mulling over a tale Of rum and slaves and gold. She married powers of dark. She burned in bright rivers. Thats why.

WHEN DEMONS RULED

This world became impossibly complex. The people fattened but were small as toys Insidelazy and sour, as though a hex Had taken hold. A womans outer poise Disguised an inner cowering of nerve, And often sons remained forever boys. I watched my daughters flower, only to swerve Toward superstition, lies, and games of chance In other days our kind had vied to serve. The demon brood condemned me for a glance. A devil locked me in their fortressed towers, But when they saw me try to sing and dance, Tower changed to thimble, and life to hours, Song to shriek in the Ministry of Powers.

THE NESTING DOLL

Once upon a time a little doll Encountered demons in the woods near home. One took the guise of well-bred traveler, Smiling and chatting as he touched her here And there, at last worming into her mouth By cunning sleights so he could taste her soul. At first the demon could not find the soul, And he was roiling-wroth against the doll, Sending her vomit, scalding her small mouth With curses; Mama turned her out from home, And Papa yodeled, She wont bunk down here But take her thwacks and be a traveler. How cruel to make a child a traveler, A ditch her nest! The black night of her soul Expelled a single star; the demon could hear It crackle, plunging like the tears the doll Had shed when she looked back at Home Sweet Home. Wrinkles were rock around her papas mouth. The demon snatched the starlight in his mouth Then grief was in him like the traveler They call the Wandering Jew, who has no home And cannot die. The fiery drop of soul Explored his throat and gut; meanwhile the doll Kept dreaming that some girl would beg, Stop here. Nobody did. The demon still could hear Her words; in pools he must have glimpsed her mouth Bewailing fate, although it seemed the doll Was rubbish to him now, the traveler Less than the tiny prisoned flame of soul That made his mazy heart a hearth and home.

A demons heart is a queer sort of home . . . Yet the star burned as brightly there as here Or any place and had not changed from soul. At times it whisked up to the demons mouth. Perhaps light sought to reach the traveler And knew when demon yielded to the doll. When home was starlight singing in her mouth, All powers burned to hear the traveler And marveled soul was nested in a doll.

A FIRE IN ICE
Riposte to Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily Dickinsons Clothes

Dont think because her words are wild That Dickinsons a sylphine child For your undressingsdont rend the haze Of veils that shields you from her blaze. Her hands are capable and know The ways of burninghow sparks blow When flames are jostled by a bold Adept, her fingers tipped with cold. And though in after-hours she threads The dew she plucks from spiderwebs, Or answers Who? to midnights owls, Or strokes the cats, returned from prowls Or takes to skipping to and fro With moonlit maidens made of snow, Shell freeze, inviolate and meek, If you so much as try to speak. Shove offavoid those brazen wings: Shes not for your unbuttonings. The polished stone above her head Declares her state among the dead: Here waits that sphinx whose secret power In riddles found her finest flower.