Friday 10 April 2020

Comfort: A Poem

There was a curious comfort 
in the consciousness that she was 
back in the underworld 

back in the cauldron 
the chrysalis 

for she’d been there before 
and knew its darkness well 
no longer frightening or painful 
but familiar 

the ways well-trodden and 
full of memory 

just like home

Detail of Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

3 comments:

  1. i like this! her story is very intriguing, both the overall themes and the individual characters... i remember reading the story as a young girl, probably in some sanitised children's mythology book, and thinking that poor persephone got a rather bad deal. not only abducted and forced to marry her abductor, but required even after her mother found her to stay so many months in the land of the dead, although she had done nothing wrong, only eaten a few pomegranate sees. later, as an adult with plenty of comparative mythology and folklore studies onboard, i could see it differently. still, i was always happy to discover variants in which she chose to go into the underworld. and we all need our germination times, our quiet times. for healing, for inspiration, for simple rest. your persephone seems to have learnt that, wisely.

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  2. Thank you. Of course the poem is really about me, but I recognised the echo of Persephone's story. And as someone commented on Instagram, we are all Persephone now. Clearly the idea resonates with people in these strange times.

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