#GreekMythology - Vijaya Sundaram

May 13, 2017 Original Poetry

Undoing Penelope
©May 13th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

So many shimmering threads,
So many interwoven lines,
You weave them all together,
And then undo them all,
As you wait for your beloved,
Lost to you for twenty years.

Why undo yourself, when
You’ve spent a whole life
Making up the pattern
Of this, your cloth?
All this hard work, this love,
Your vigilance, your loyalty,
All these for your beloved,
Gone in an instant,
When you pull out those
Shimmering threads of gold
And purple, and blue and green,
Like sunset over the Aegean?

Are you waiting for the one
Who will make you whole again
And who is that?
Is he sailing from the east
Or riding from the west
Or blowing from the north,
Or floating in from the south.

And what if he had not been
Entrapped and turned into
A boar, or not held enraptured
By a seductress on a lonely isle?
And what if he had not fallen asleep
At the sail, and had the wild winds
Loosed by his jealous, drunken men?
Where would you be, or your story?

There is no one, nowhere.
It is you, yourself, alone, undeterred,
Who will stitch up those ends
Tie those knots, weave that scarf,
Arise from this pointless mourning,
This indolence, this matyrdom.
Your making of yourself
Is the unmaking of yourself.

Around you, mirrors abound
And smoke obscures your vision.
Do you care about the ending?
Why undo this scarf you’ve woven,
Why deny yourself your pleasure
In this beautiful work, your art,
When it could be your shroud?
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Tags: #GreekMythology, #Metaphorical poem, #OdysseyReference, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Penelope

Orpheus (and I)

Feb 26, 2017 Free Verse, Original Poetry, Uncategorized

Orpheus (and I)
©February 26th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

Every day, the idea of oblivion
Entices, lures, coaxes me ever closer.
I resist, then press on towards it.
And I resist again.

There is a river whose name
I forget, remembering pain, and forget.
Once, I crossed over, and returned
How, I know not. Yet, it calls.

Now, I play my music, but it’s
The ghost of someone who plays:
The ghost of a beloved memory
Who lets her fingers
Stray dreamily over the lyre.

The stones speak.
The woods stir.
Animals gather round.
They come closer and closer.
I do not greet them.
They sit in silence around me.
They bring some solace.

Sunlight plays over my head
Like the fingers of my beloved
I see strings stretched across it.
I play it, and rain falls, flowing
Over my cheeks, like the river
Of forgetting, bleak, cold.

See over there?
Somewhere beyond those hills,
Women beckon, red-eyed, long-nailed,
Wild-haired, naked, wine-stained,
And manic, ready to wreck my life.

They fill me with terror,
Yet, I’m strangely drawn to them
As if an error of blood, of rage
Connects me to them, an error of fate.

Someone long ago, from the future
Said to me, “Avoid them.”

I forget who it was,
A poet, I think.
She treasured my music.
She wept over my lost love.
She wrote about my sorrow.
And she said, “Stay here.
These woods, these animals
Will love you and protect you.
Play your music for them.”

I do not listen to her words.
She was born of my mind, a mere
Figment, a fragment of a future
That didn’t exist, because it hadn’t
Come into being, because I
Didn’t sing of it, because I
Couldn’t picture it, because I
Abhorred the future, because i
Loathed the present, because I
Wanted to live and die in the past.

I leave that place, weeping
For my lost love.
The trees weep with me, and animals
Follow, forlorn, seeking comfort
From one who is bereft of it.

The hills call.
Maenads beckon.
I am come to meet
A fate I cannot fathom.
A seek an end to this.
I seek my beloved.
I hear her call, even
As I am torn.
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