THE MOTHERS ("Horizontal Rain")

Recently I had an unbelievably good time reading Faust II in Polish (the only version of the second part I have). It's a comedy, without the darkness of Part I. Mephisto is the chief wit, of course. Faust (the German name means "fist" -- but in Latin, faustus means the favored one) has no sense of humor.

Goethe's "the Mothers" inspired the ending to “Horizontal Rain.”

HORIZONTAL RAIN

Years of drought I waited for this

horizontal rain –

strands of raindrops shining in the dark

like Ariadne’s thread,

winding me back to the years

when everything lay ahead –

trembling droplets about to slide

from drenched delicious leaves.

But by midlife I noticed I was deep

in a labyrinth, and whether I’d be

a hero was uncertain, or who

or what I would meet.

Mountains I haven’t climbed

I would no longer climb.

The arson of passion

lay smoldering behind me.

These have been the tools of my survival:

tenderness born of exile

and silence born of cunning,

in corners groping for the thread.

It shines, the dark before the flowers,
my eyes stitched with horizontal rain.

In the wake of my springtime, I see them

again: my mother and her mother,

and the mothers before then –

who one after another

handed me the skein,

so I could remember the journey.

~ Oriana

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