From Wild Angels (1960-1975) Offering I made a poem going to sleep last night, woke in sunlight, it was clean forgotten. If it was any good, gods of the great darkness where sleep goes and farther death goes, you not named, then as true offering accept it. The Maenads Somewhere I read that when they finally staggered off the mountain into some strange town, past drunk, hoarse, half naked, blear-eyed, blood dried under broken nails and across young thighs, but still jeering and joking, still trying to dance, lurching and yelling, but falling dead asleep by the market stalls, sprawled helpless, flat out, then middle-aged women, respectable housewives, would come and stand nightlong in the agora silent together as ewes and cows in the night fields, guarding, watching them as their mothers watched over them. And no man dared that fierce decorum. From A Book of Songs The Old Lady I have dreed my dree, I have wooed my wyrd, and now I shall grow a five-foot beard and braid it into tiny braids and wander where the webfoot wades among the water's shining blades. I will fear nothing I have feared. I'm the queen of spades, the jack of trades, braiding my knives into my beard. Why should I know what I have known? Once was enough to make it my own. The things I got I will forget. I'll knot my beard into a net and cast the net and catch a fish who will ungrant my every wish and leave me nothing but a stone on the riverbed alone, leave me nothing but a rock where the feet of herons walk. Creation of the Horse The salt green uncle-god, the Earthquaker, thought of a creature with muscles like sea-swells to leap across the beaches like a breaker and beat on the earth like the waves with its feet. So he struck a startled island with his trident and then himself stood back in surprise at the fiery uprearing, the white mane flying, the foam-spattered flanks and the earth-dark eyes. The Arts of Old Age written in the airport I learn the arts of old age day by day: the expertise of being lame; the sense of unimpatient impotence; the irony of all accomplishments; the silent, furtive welcome of delay. The Whirlwind Will fear of the foreboding dream avert or invite the prophecy? How to foretell the paths of dust caught in this visionary whirl, this standing wind, this spiral stream? A breath breathed out will set me free. I'll choose to do the thing I must. The world dreamed me, I dream the world. January Night Prayer Bellchimes jangle, freakish wind whistles icy out of desert lands over the mountains. Janus, Lord of winter and beginnings, riven and shaken, with two faces, watcher at the gates of winds and cities, god of the wakeful: keep me from coldhanded envy and petty anger. Open my soul to the vast dark places. Say to me, say again, nothing is taken, only given. Excerpted from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems by Ursula K. Le Guin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
