The Ophelia Cantos By Theodora Goss

Lilies tangle in her hair: green stems

Like water-snakes.


A disembodied hand

Floats on the surface. So much has been lost

Already: toes, the lobe of her left ear.

But this remains, a damp, immaculate

Sign, like a message saved from the dark current.


She wandered through the courtyard in her tattered

Dress distributing wild violets.

She called us whores—your son ma'am, not your husband's

I think—and knaves—the taxes sir, your cellar

Is stocked with sweet Moselle. We called this madness.


Indicia of her innocence: to be

A maiden floating dead among the flowers.


She will become an elegant and mute

Image: the sodden velvet coat, the sinking

Coronet of poppies, virgin's bower,

And eglantine. The replicable girl.

(A blob of Chinese white becomes a hand.

The artist puts his brush in turpentine,

The model pulls her stockings on.)


And yet,

Surround by the water-lily stems,

Her face appears an enigmatic mask:

A drowned Medusa in her snaking hair.

The lilies gape around her like pink mouths,

Telling us nothing we can understand.


Her eyes stare upwards: dead and not quite dead.

***************

We're heading for the harvest, the time of dead things, the time when alive things are cut down dead and used to feed alive things. It's all (the Dark) Goddess pouring (the Dark) Goddess into (the Dark) Goddess.

Image and lovely patterns here.