FREUD AND JUNG TO EURYDICE

C. G. JUNG TO EURYDICE

Dear Madam: I received your kind

letter from hell last Tuesday afternoon.

Here too we mostly talk about the weather.

It rains in my dreams. Freud said,

A gentleman would not have

such an unconscious.

As to diet, you either eat

the forbidden fruit,

or you’ll spend eternity

shopping for cabbage and potatoes.

I’m not saying cabbage is wrong –

see my essay on the nature of the soul

(Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia, Volume II).

The error is to think we have a soul,

as one can have a car or an umbrella.

The soul has us.  

Please don’t take

your life personally.

In the underworld, you say,

everyone dresses well.

You sit in a vegetarian café,

waiting for the Orpheus archetype –

this time without the betrayal.

Dear lost bride, to sing one must

turn around – away from the hungry

living, and the even more

hungry ghosts. I have to go now.

Emma is calling me to dinner.

Believe me, I understand:

you expected a long, wise letter

from a famous man. Answers

to questions. Why

we live. Why anything

exists. Is there heaven,

since we know there is hell.

Freud was wrong:

the mundane prevails over sex.

Perhaps the meaning of my life

will lie in my off-hand remark,

A penis is only a phallic symbol.

A cup can be broken; a symbol

remains, waiting to be filled.

I see your signature is smudged.

Next time, please wipe your shadow.

Regretfully, Your Jung

**

    ~ Oriana

**

TEAR JARS: FREUD TO EURYDICE

Dear Serpent Bride, The poppies you sent

withered at once.

Did you think the mild

flowers of the dead

could survive seeing this world?

Marrying a poet is a death wish.

Unlike being a poet –

that’s an immortality project.

Your mother should have

warned you –

but you were motherless;

you talked to the trees.

*

I will tell you a secret:

all my patients see me as Mother.

Please don’t stare at the alabaster

tear jars in my cabinet –

They bore me, my rich neurotics.

Not you – I like the lacy way

you lay your shadow on the couch.

You tremble, transparent,

thinking I’ll say

you have the Eurydice Complex:

waiting for a lover

to sing you out of hell.

*

Beware: attractive saviors

always have a tragic flaw:

a wound that makes them

betray you. Alas,

a woman has to be betrayed

if she is to give birth to herself:

not as the Loved One, but as a torn

Lover who loves beyond return.

You have the Orpheus Complex.

There is no cure. Follow your singing

like fate. And what is talent unless

fate, what good unless like a god

it possesses you? But being

a woman and having been dead

in your youth, you must –

Eurydice, shall we dance?

I admire how invisibly

you walk out the door. Do not

turn – or I’ll follow

and love you

like wind in the trees.

**

      ~ Oriana