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 moons-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.