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PRAYER BEFORE DROWNING
by Paul Pines
At last I understand
how we shed
our lives in time,
peel off outrage
terror
and despair
like wet clothes
after a freezing rain.
Nothing to fear.
We shall all sink
back into
the unconscious
of this world
your warm
matrix,
Isis,
patroness of seamen!
*
Dark women are in the sea
our own depth in the depth of the world.
They
are the swimmers who take us down.
Trees
in the rain
are drenched in this sea
as are grass,
stones,
cars on the highway.
Dark women swim through them
and into this room
saying,
"Desire is the measure
of all things."
I tell them I want to know
what is already there but hidden
and ask them to connect you
that way to me.
*
Orpheus
loses Eurydice
to return
with the vision
of Eurydice
which dissolves like a word
on his tongue
So he goes down again to
the forge
where forms
are made
to emerge
with a song that contains
a moth
playing at the source
of desire--
a river of fire
that flows both ways