"The Loba Addresses the Goddess / or The Poet as Priestess Addresses the Loba-Goddess" by Diane di Prima

THE LOBA ADDRESSES THE GODDESS / OR THE

   POET AS PRIESTESS ADDRESSES THE LOBA-

                                    GODDESS

Is it not in yr service that I wear myself out

running ragged among these hills, driving children

to forgotten movies? In yr service

broom & pen. The monstrous feasts

we serve the others on the outer porch

(within the house there is only rice & salt)

And we wear exhaustion like a painted robe

I & my sisters

wresting the goods from the niggardly

dying fathers

healing each other w / water & bitter herbs

that when we stand naked in the circle of lamps

(beside the small water, in the inner grove)

we show

no blemish, but also no superfluous beauty.

It had burned off in watches of the night.

O Nut, O mantle of stars, we catch at you

lean mournful

ragged triumphant

shaggy as grass

our skins ache of emergence / dark o’ the moon

Source of the text – Diane di Prima, Loba.  New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

TJB: In priestly grandeur & amplifying asides, we hear poetry as hard work, as sacred self-sacrifice. What would the bricklayers or nurses think?