On Heirogamy and Sacrifice

“... Despite the fact that both (Melanippus) and Komaitho wanted to marry, all they got from both sets of parents was a determined refusal. The unhappy adventures of Melanippus, like those of many others, show how love tends to undermine the law of men and subvert their devotion to the gods. For, unable to marry, Komaithos and Melanippus slaked the thirst of their passion in the temple of Artemis, then took to using the temple regularly as a nuptial chamber.

“As a result, Artemis begin to weak her anger on the local inhabitants. The earth ceased to bear fruit, and people contracted strange and fatal diseases. So they fled to consult hte oracle at Delphi, where the Pythia laid the blame on Melanippus and Komaitho. The oracle ordered that the lovers be sacrificed to Artemis and that every year the most beautiful young girl and the most handsome young boy be sacrificed to the goddess.

“Because of the sacrifice, the people dubbed the river near the temple The Merciless. Previously it had had no name. The young boys and girls who would perish without having committed any crime, and likewise for their familiies, this was a terrible desitny, but I do believe that for Melanippus and Komaitho it was not a misfortune; only one thing is worht as much as life itself for me: that a love should be successful.”

-- Pausinas Description of Greece VII, 19, 1-5

Roberto Calasso comments, “Eros brings into the open what the law must hide yet nevertheless contains within itself: the fact that the temple is a nuptial chamber ... If heirogamy is the secret of sacrifice, sacrifice will nevertheless serve to hide the fact. It will pile a wall of blood and corpses before the place whree Komaitho and Melanippus abandoned themselves to their improbable, ‘successful’ love. (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, 290)





DEFIANCE

May 16


Love is the greatest defiance,
defiling the temple of what we
must not touch with its
buck blue naked embrace.
Against the will of gods
and fathers I fathom down
to you, blue contemptessa,
finning leagues of salt desire
no mortal lungs or angel
wings can reach. Every cut
and bruise of this sundered
world condemns this fragile
house where my wife sleeps
and I extol profane profounds
& our cat curls on the cusp
between with the surest
purchase on Your theme.
Sum the freight of bills &
chores & worrisome news
both near and far and
a black sea’s mashed hard
against this house up to
its eaves: And yet we wake
and smile and hold hands
defiant of the day as
we have for ten years running.
I don’t know if marriage
thrives despite the ills
or because of them, as if
those nascent seeded
lovers years ago could not
rise to bloom without so
much black earth to fight
through. I knock against the
cold stone knees of fathers
who all failed in love’s
holy sacrilege: their fear is
the bony carapace of
self-reliant gall, erecting
a stone sea-wall against
the wash which heals
only by destroying all
one thinks is true and good.
They all failed love
as I do every day, in
all the bruised and sequent ways;
yet the mystery of history
is that love is wilder still,
an eternal boy astride
a dolphin joy, cresting
the pourings of first light.
I’m more enthralled with You
than ever, as both Eve-song
and eve-tide doom, that
curve of wave which
slakes the lyre I strum
and burn each day.
My life is one great
songbook for which this
poem is the latest page
I rip like panties from
the sweet slick hips
You are. Here at the altar
of the bluest depth
I jack my daily seed,
in praise of every shore
and bed I walk
and swim defiant
margins of. We’re slowly
dying in this crush of days,
every losing to the sea
the frail harborage we
found in each other
so many years ago: Yet
here is where love is
most strange and strongest,
after the wave has curved
and smashed and runnelled
up the sand in a cusp of hissing
foam: Whatever we made
here is holiest in ebbing back,
that motion resonant
of what is best in You and I,
cathedralled in the backdrawn
sigh which bids new lovers
desecrate the temple
we have built, and mortar
with their own ground bones
what we did in defiant
of all gods and parentage.
Let what they see in each others eye
replete what paired gods found
in their immortal immoral bouree
when they clenched and hissed I Dye
defiant of their every birthright
for one wild plunge in Your dark sea.





AN ANNIVERSARY

Wendell Berry

What we have been becomes
The country where we are,
Spring goes, summer comes,
And in the heat, as one year
Or a thousand years before,
The fields and woods prepare
The burden of their seed
Out of time’s wound, the old
Richness of the fall. Their deed
Is renewal. In the household
Of the woods the past
Is always healing in the light,
The high shiftings of the air.
It stands upon its yield
And thrives. Nothing is lost.
What yields, though in despair,
Opens and rises in the night.
Love binds us to this term
With its yes that is crying
In our marrow to confirm
Life that only lives by dying.
Lovers live by the moon
Whose dark and light are one,
Changing without rest.
The root struts from the seed
In the earth’s dark — harvest
And feast at the edge of sleep.
Darkened, we are carried
Out of need, deep
In the country we have married.





HOMEWARDING RIDE

20005

Looking out over the cove I felt a strong
sense of the interchangeability
of land and sea in this marginal world
of the shore and of the links between
the life of the two. There was an
awareness of the past and of the
continuity of time, obliterating much
that had gone before.

-- Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea

This shore we share was once
a birth, then a baptism,
and later still a naked kiss:
Now it’s just a paper strand
where I walk, pen in hand,
down a mile or so of
remembered bliss, arousing
on dry acres the salt
semblance of a blue fold
and crash and hiss.
Here I remit every ache
and sorrow on the inside
that remains, a love of
wetter regions of the
heart where here, even
at this our, that greater
salt sustains. Yesterday
my mother’s poodle
died, clutched away
by a massive heart attack
on the examining table.
My mother in her grief
said she was joined at
the heart with the frail
so docile doggie who
loved to be held in
her lap. Sometimes
my mother would set
Ginger in the front basket
of her bicycle and ride
the neighborhood, an old
woman with her matron
charge triumphant in
the basket, ears flapping
in the breeze like kites.
How awful now the empty
spaces in my mother’s house --
holy too, as heart-spaces
grow cathedral in the
tidal smashings of love,
waxing for scant moments
and then draining forever
out; and then the magic
of how that absence tides
into a fullness of
the inward shore, the
grieving sands poured
slowly full with laughing
children and romping dogs
and beloveds smiling
deep and sure. That’s
the strand I walk and
weave each day, declaring
brimming hearts from
paper boats loosed
on waters deep inside.
With God and kisses
on blue rockings my
homeward songs thus ride.