Feral Beauty
17 April 2007
Read this deep last night (or is it this morning?).
THE LIONESS
The scent of her beauty draws me to her place.
The desert stretches, edge from edge.
Rock. Silver grasses. Drinking hole.
The starry sky.
The lioness pauses
in her back-and-forth pacing of three yards square
and looks at me. Her eyes
are truthful. They mirror rivers,
seacoasts, volcanoes, the warmth
of moon-bathed promontories.
Under her haunches’ golden hide
flows an innate, half-abnegated power.
Her walk
is bounded. Three square yards
encompass where she goes.In country like this, I say, the problem is always
one of straying too far, not of staying
within bounds. There are caves,
high rocks, you don’t explore. Yet you know
they exist. Her proud, vulnerable head
sniffs toward them. It is her country, she
knows they exist.I come towards her in the starlight.
I look into her eyes
as one who loves can look,
entering the space behind her eyeballs,
leaving myself outside.
So, at last, through her pupils,
I see what she is seeing:
between her and the river’s flood,
the volcano veiled in rainbow,
a pen that measures three yards square.
Lashed bars.
The cage.
The penance.Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language, 1975
There is so much in this poem. Just so much. The pure physicality of the lioness, the way it conveys awe over its beauty and the fear of the viewer by trespassing its space; the power of rivers, seacoasts, volcanoes, to inspire the same, the innate power beneath the beauty of her body. The irresistible danger of straying into her territory, of the desire for the inaccessible caves and high rocks among the seas, the rivers, and volcanoes. Metaphors, all of them, I can physically feel, for sexuality and spirituality both, and for relationships with the human and the divine, the body and the spirit.
Entry Filed under: Faith, Nature, Poetry, Reading, Religion, Rumination, Sexuality, Spirituality. .
8 Comments Add your own
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
1.
Audrey | 18 April 2007 at 1:25 pm
That is neat. Did the picture come with the poem or did you find it to supplement the poem?
2.
Benedict | 18 April 2007 at 1:29 pm
It was separate; I was looking on the various image sites for a good picture of a “lioness”, and found some good ones of real lionesses, but when this one popped up it was just too perfect to not use, considering the way I’m interpreting Rich’s poem for my own life right now.
Glad to have you back. Blog life is slow right now, especially comments, it seems.
3.
Parrot | 18 April 2007 at 4:23 pm
Provocative pic, and to the point that I’m distracted when I attempt to read and appreciate the poem.
No doubt, the point goes hand in hand with sensual experience and what I realize as my own concupiscent pull toward the addictions of civilization. Of course, while I’m reminded to be weary of gnositic attitudes about flesh and civilization, I’m also reminded that life in the wilderness isn’t such an unfortunate precursor to entrance into the promised land.
“However beautiful a view may be, it requires the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game” (Allan Quatermain, in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines).
4.
Benedict | 18 April 2007 at 4:29 pm
Hey Parrot, welcome back. You’re comments are always great, as you seem to have a knack for figuring out almost exactly what I’m getting at more often than not. No different here.
Haven’t read King Solomon’s Mines, but I did read She. I’ll have to check this one out. (In my spare time…
5.
Jennifer | 21 April 2007 at 11:12 pm
Ah, spring is here…reminds me of a recent visit to the zoo that was, well, everything the poem breathes.
6.
Benedict | 22 April 2007 at 6:35 pm
Sounds lovely! Wish I could have been there.
Although I suspect it’s much warmer now than it was then, no? And did you encounter any tigresses?
7.
Jennifer | 29 April 2007 at 8:36 pm
No…but the lions kept us busy enough! (blush)
8.
Benedict | 29 April 2007 at 8:38 pm
Given the nature of the poem and the picture, I think that’s appropriate for them!