The Black Goddess
She is Fate, the Creatress and the Destroyer.

You will understand why She destroys, but the destruction will bring its own sorrow ... and that sorrow is perhaps Her greatest gift to the moon-struck poet."

Robert Cochrane (1966)

In the neverending blackness
Of the space between
Yesterday and tomorrow
We will find Her
Mother of both the darkness
And the dawn.
In the silent, breathless hush
Between the exhale and the inhale
Between the systolic and diastolic
Beats of a heart momentarily at rest
She abides.
Change swirls around her
Shifting patterns of light and dark
Earth and Air, Fire and Water
Good and Evil, Female and Male
Yet, she remains
As the still center of the cyclone
The all-seeing eye of the hurricane
Silent
Unmoving
Timeless
Formless
Nameless
Faceless
Always behind us
Like the dark side of the moon
Like the back of our own heads.
Feet first we enter
Her realm
Until head first we emerge
Bundled into our graves
In a fetal position
Our knees tucked beneath our chins
Awaiting the dawn.
What will we dream in this sleep between
The death rattle and that gasp that heralds
A baby's first wail?
Will the melodrama
Of our life past make us laugh
Or cry?
Will we try to turn away
When we have no head to turn?
Will we try to shut
Our lidless eyes?
Or will we watch the movie
Through its final reel
Alone?
The Hell of the Christians
Holds no such anguish.
And yet
Dawn comes.
We gasp, we wail and rejoin the dance of life
And try not to stumble
Or tread on others' feet.
Set after set
The piper never tires.
We step the figure
Clasping now this hand, and now that
In the traveling measure, the grand hey
First fearful, then graceful
Awaiting the next tune and the next
With tapping toes
And cheerful whistle
Until that day which is not a day
That time which is not a time
In the still of the darkness between nightfall and daybreak
Between the last breath and the first
When finally we are freed from
Images seen only
In the upside-down mirrors
On the rear surfaces of our eyes
We will at last see Her face
And we will find it
Beautiful.