From: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Subject: Persephone / Marie Coffin
Reply-To: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 22:48:59 GMT


	Persephone
	------------------------------------------------------------
	
	They got it wrong,
	the old storytellers --
	it was a long time ago now.
	Maybe they forgot
	or being men,
	they thought a damsel in distress
	and a mother's love would be
	more beautiful,
	but anyway they got it all wrong.
	If you'll sit still on the floor here
	and wind my ball of yarn
	I'll tell you a story,
	the true, true story
	of Persephone.
	She was a little girl like you.
	
	A long time ago, before the world was old,
	the plants didn't know to grow
	and the sun didn't know to shine,
	there was a goddess named Demeter.
	
	She walked the fields of the earth
	and told the corn to grow tall
	and the sun to rise; wherever
	she went the birds would wake up singing.
	She had a busy life,
	
	and she had a son named Corey and
	a daughter Persephone.
	When they were little they looked
	so much alike,
	no one could tell them apart.
	But Demeter, well,
	you know how a mother is,
	she loved Corey better.
	
	She took him everywhere,
	walking the plowed fields,
	singing the corn in the ear,
	she took him everywhere.
	
	Persephone, who hated to be dusty
	and hot, she stayed safely at home
	(her brother called her "stupid one")
	and grew to be ten
	and twelve and fifteen,
	all gawky and tall with hair
	that never looked brushed
	and her feet were too big.
	
	Every day she went down to the spring
	for water
	and talked to the girl in the pond
	who looked like her brother
	and took a cold bath,
	went back to the house
	and made dinner.
	
	When Demeter and Corey came home
	with sweaty faces and dust on their sandals
	she would be waiting, clean and damp,
	feed them and fetch them water
	and wait on them, and she hardly had a chance
	to eat her own food.
	So she was thin.
	
	What about her father?
	This was before they had fathers.
	Otherwise the story would be different.
	
	One day in plowing time, Corey,
	who thought no one so lovely
	as his own mother, got lost
	in the enchantment of her singing
	and caught in the plow
	and turned under.
	Hades came to collect the body
	but there was nothing left,
	so he went home
	
	past the spring and saw
	Persephone picking flowers
	and Hades, who knows the end
	of everybody's story, could see
	that she would be beautiful
	so he took her in his chariot
	down and down
	deep into his kingdom 
	of darkness.
	
	He gave her gold and jewels
	and servants to wash her,
	but Persephone didn't know 
	how to be a queen
	she just wanted to go home
	where everyone ignored her,
	where she could talk 
	to the girl in the water.
	And when she had dinner
	served on silver platters
	she wanted to go hide in the kitchen.
	Her stomach rolled up tight 
	and went to sleep.
	She couldn't eat a thing.
	
	And when Hades touched her
	with cold hands like well water
	she screamed Mother!  Mother!
	But no one came.
	
	No one heard her, for Demeter,
	wild at the loss of Corey, sat
	at home beside her cold hearth
	and tore her hair
	and the earth grew dark
	and the plants died.
	
	At last, when Persephone wouldn't eat,
	Hades had to let her go.
	He sent her back to her mother, but first
	he asked her to fix him a pomegranate,
	the only time she'd ever been in his kitchen.
	She carefully washed and peeled and arranged,
	and she popped a few seeds in her mouth.
	That was her mistake.
	
	She went home and swept out the hearth
	and fed her mother and sent her out
	to pace the fields
	and summer came back again,
	but Hades found her and on the strength
	of those three pomegranate seeds, he made
	Persephone go back with him
	and be his queen of silver and ice 
	for three months every year.
	
	Persephone cried Mother!  Save me!  But Demeter
	looked empty and said "You've made your marriage bed,
	go lie in it."  Alone again, Demeter
	sat in her cold house and mourned her son
	and the world rested in winter.
	
	So now Persephone is trapped,
	going round and round, 
	going up and coming down.
	Underground, she longs for sunshine,
	in her mother's house she wants to be loved.
	And everywhere, she wants the little girl
	in the pond.
	
	Whenever a girl-child disappears,
	you know Persephone
	has taken her into the dark
	to eat the fruit and never go home.
	   
	She wants and wants. 
	She eats and eats. 
	Who knows why? It spins
	the world around,  
	like a top.
	
	It is her head.


Marie Coffin
January 5, 1992
	

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