The Mad Pomegranate Tree by Odysseus Elytis

In these all-white courtyards where the south wind blows
Whistling through vaulted arcades, tell me, is it the pomegranate tree
That leaps in the light, scattering its fruitful laughter
With windy willfulness and whispering, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree
That quivers with foliage newly born at dawn 
Raising high its colours in a shiver of triumph?

On plains where the naked girls awake,
When the harvest clover with their light brown arms
Roaming round the borders of their dreams, tell me,  is  it the mad pomegranate tree
Unsuspecting, that puts the lights in their verdant baskets
That floods their names with the singing of birds, tell me
Is it the mad pomegranate tree that combats the cloudy skies of the world?

On the day that it adorns itself in jealousy with seven kinds of feathers, 

Girding the eternal sun with a thousand blinding prisms

Tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree

That seizes on the run a horse's mane of a hundred lashes, 

Never sad and never grumbling, tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree

That cries out the new hop now dawning?

Tell me, is that the pomegranate tree waving in the distance, 

Fluttering a handkerchief of leaves of cool flame, 

A sea near birth with a thousand ships and more, 

With waves that a thousand times and more set out and go

To unscented shores, tell me, is it the pomegranate tree

That creaks the rigging aloft in the lucid air?

High as can be, with the blue bunch of grapes that flares and celebrates

Arrogant, full of danger- tell me, is it the mad pomegranate tree 

That shatters with light the demon's tempest in the middle of the world

That spreads far as can be the saffron ruffle of day

Richly embroider with scattered songs- tell me, is it the pomegranate tree

That hastily unfastens the silk apparel of day?

In petticoats of April first and cicadas of the feast of mid-August

Tell me, that which plays, that which rages, that which can entice

Shaking out of threats the evil black darkness

Spilling in the sun's embrace intoxicating birds

Tell me, that which opens its wings on the breast of things

On the breast of deepest dreams, is that the mad pomegranate tree 

We Have Come to be Danced by Jewel Mathieson

We have come to be danced.

Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance.

But the claw our way back into the belly.

Of the sacred, sensual animal dance.

The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of the box dance.

The holding the precious moment in the palms.

Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced.

Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance.

But the wring the sadness from our skin dance.

The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.

The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced.

Not the monkey see, monkey do dance.

One two dance like you.

One two three dance like me dance.

But the grave robber, tomb stalker, 

Tearing scabs and scars open dance.

The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced.

Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle.

But the matted-hair flying voodoo mama

Shaman shakin' ancient bones dance.

The strip us from our casings, return our wings.

Sharpen our claws and tongues dance.

The shed dead cells and slip into

The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced.

Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance.

But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance.

The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance.

The mother may I? Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance.

The olly olly oxen free free free dance.

The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced.

Where the kingdom's collide.

In the cathedral of flesh.

To burn back into the light.

To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray.

To root in skin sanctuary.

We have come to be danced.

We have come.

Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute

 Adèle m'emmenait parfois à l'église de Montrouge où je faisais les mêmes gestes qu'elle... des gestes qui ne me semblaient pas être bien différents de ceux qu'exige la simple politesse... la main plongée rapidement dans le bénitier, l'automatique signe de croix, la brève esquisse de génuflexion en passant devant l'autel... elle aurait été très choquée si je ne l'avais pas fait, comme elle l'aurait été si je n'avais pas dit "Au revoir Madame" en sortant d'une boutique... ou si je ne m'étais pas effacée dans une porte... Il m'était impossible d'imaginer... malgré tous les actes de piété accomplis rigouresement et très fréquemment par Adèle, elle allait souvent à l'office de six heures du matin, ne manquait jamais la messe un dimanche... je ne pouvais pas lui attribuer la moindre parcelle d'une vie spirituelle, un sentiment quelconque de l'existence possible de quelque chose qui n'était pas sur terre, par terre, au ras de terre où elle vivait. 

- Mais toi-même, quand tu priais...

- C'était plutôt de la superstition... je récitais "Notre Père qui êtes aux Cieux" ou "Saint Marie, mère de Dieu"... comme je touchais du bois pour détourner le mauvais sort, ou avec le vague espoir qu'ainsi je recevrais ce que je désirais...

    Avec grand-mère à l'église russe de la rue Daru, je me prosternais front contre terre auprès d'elle, je faisais le signe de croix, cette fois pas comme avec Adèle, de gauche à droite avec ma main ouverte, mais de droite à gauche avec mon pouce appuyé contre deux doigts.

    Je ne sais si grand-mère était vraiment croyante, je crois qu'elle allait à l'église les jours de fête pour prendre part à des rites qu'elle aimait, pour retrouver sa Russie, s'y replonger, et moi je m'y replongeais avec elle... je retrouvais la chaleur, la lumière d'innombrables cierges, les icônes dans leur châsse comme une dentelle d'argent ou d'or éclairées par les flammes des petites veilleuses de couleur, les chants... une ferveur répandue sur tout et en moi comme une exaltation très douce et calme que j'avais déjà ressentie... était-ce à Pétersbourg ou encore avant, à Ivanovo...

- C'est étrange qu'à cet âge-là jamais ne te venait l'idée que de ces religions n'étaient pas celles de tes ancêtres... que jamais personne ne t'en avait parlé...

- Ma mère ne voulait pas le savoir... je crois qu'elle n'y pensait jamais. Quant à mon père, il considérait toutes les pratiques religieuses comme des survivances... des vieilles croyances dépassées... il était "libre penseur" et pour lui comme pour tous ses amis le fait même de mentionner que quelqu'un est juif ou ne l'est pas, ou qu'il est slave, était le signe de la plus noire réaction, une véritable indécence...

    Je n'ai jamais entendu dire d'un ami qui venait à la maison qu'il était autre chose que russe ou bien français. Et à l'école même cette notion de Russe ne semblait pas exister, tous les enfants d'où qu'ils fussent venus étaient considérés comme de bons petite Français. Je ne me souviens pas qu'on m'ait posé aucune question, visiblement les idées de différence de race ou de religion n'entraient dans l'esprit de personne.

    Mon père me laissait aller dans toutes les églises où l'on m'emmenait... peut-être se disait-il que ces belles cérémonies ne pouvaient que laisser à un enfant de beaux souvenirs, et il ne cherchait pas plus à me détourner de Dieu, du Christ, des saints, de la Sainte Vierge, qu'il ne m'avait empêchée d'adresser des prières au Père Noël.

    Mais plus tard, chaque fois qu'était soulevée cette question, j'ai toujours vu mon père déclarer aussitôt, crier sur les toits qu'il était juif. Il pensait que c'était vil, que c'était stupide d'en être honteux et il disait : Combien d'horreurs, d'ignominies, combien de mensonges et de bassesses a-t-il fallu pour arriver à ce résultat, que des gens ont honte devant eux-mêmes de leurs ancêtres et se sentent valorisés à leurs propres yeux, s'ils arrivent à s'en attribuer d'autres, n'importe lesquels, pourvu que ce ne soient pas ceux-là... Tu ne trouves pas, me disait-il parfois, beaucoup plus tard, que tout de même, quand on y pense... - Oui. je le trouvais... 

Sarraute, Nathalie. Enfance, Gallimard, 1983

Folio classiques, édition 2004, p.208-210 

The Journey by David Whyte

Above the mountains
the geese turn into 
the light again

Painting their 
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be 
inscribed across the
heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside of you.

Sometimes it takes 
a great sky
to find that.

First, bring 
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black 
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

Stream of Life by Rabindrath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night
     and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth        in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of     leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and        death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.

And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this        moment.

 

THE BATH by Gary Snyder

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the 
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
"Gary don't soap my hair!"
-his eye-sting fear-
the soapy hand feeling
through and around the globes and curves of his body
up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,
his penis curving up and getting hard
as I pull back skin and try to wash it
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
I squat all naked too,

                                        is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone
cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing
kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
sierra forest ridges night-
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air
sweep down from the door
a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
her hair falling hiding one whole side of
shoulder, breast, and belly,
Washes deftly Kai's head-hair
as she gets mad and yells-
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
the space between the thighs I reach through,
cup curving vulva arch and hold it from behind, 
a soapy tickle                and hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of
wombs in wombs, in rings, 
that start in music,

                                                    is this our body?

This hidden place of seed

The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers

milk and peaks up in a nipple-fits 

our mouth-

The sucking milk from this our body send through

jolts of light; the son, the father,

sharing mother's joy,

That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome

open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss

As Kai laughs at his mother's breast he now is weaned

from, we

wash each other,

                        this our body

Kai's little scrotum up close to his groin,

the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him

In flows that lifted with the same joys forces

as his nursing Masa later,

playing with her breast,

Or me within her, 

Or him emerging, 

                                                        this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweaing more, we stretch

out on the redwood benches hearts all beating

Quiet to the simmer of the stove,

the scent of cedar

And then turn over,

murmuring gossip of the grasses,

talking firewood,

Wondering how Gen's napping, how to bring him in

soon wash him too-

These boys who love their mother

who loves men, who passes on

her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.

the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

        this is our body,

                                                        

Fire inside and boiling water on the back and thighs

Go in the house-stand steaming by the center fire

Kai scampers on the sheepskin

Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

"Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!"

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames

drinking icy water

hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth

Come out from the bath.

Excerpt from The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis

 PRAISED BE Myrto standing

on the stone parapet facing the sea
     like a beautiful eight or a clay pitcher
holding a straw hat in her hand
     The white and porous middle of day
the down of sleep lightly ascending
     the faded gold inside the arcades
and the red horse breaking free
     Hera of the tree’s ancient trunk
the vast laurel grove, the light-devouring
     a house like an anchor down in the depths
and Kyra-Penelope twisting her spindle
     The straits for birds from the opposite shore
a citron from which the sky spilled out
     the blue hearing half under the sea
the long-shadowed whispering of nymphs and maples
     PRAISED BE, on the remembrance day
of the holy martyrs Cyricus and Julitta,
     a miracle burning threshing floors in the heavens
priests and birds chanting the Aye:
     HAIL Girl Burning and hail Girl Verdant
Hail Girl Unrepenting, with the prow’s sword
     Hail you who walk and the footprints vanish
Hail you who wake and the miracles are born
     Hail O Wild One of the depths’ paradise
Hail O Holy One of the islands’ wilderness
     Hail Mother of Dreams, Girl of the Open Seas
Hail O Anchor-bearer, Girl of the Five Stars
     Hail you of the flowing hair, gilding the wind
Hail you of the lovely voice, tamer of demons
     Hail you who ordain the Monthly Ritual of the Gardens
Hail you who fasten the Serpent’s belt of stars
     Hail O Girl of the just and modest sword
Hail O Girl prophetic and daedalic
 

Excerpt from The Axion Esti, by Odysseus Elytis, translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis, © 1974.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Excerpt selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy.

Shared by Sylvia Linsteadt during her Hestia workshop in October 2021