I wrote this for a performance 15 or 20 years ago, and I still think it may be the finest poem I ever wrote, because I sometimes think She Herself was there with me when I wrote it. It honestly was a moment when I felt like I was a channel for a voice greater than my own. I never told anyone that before, but feel I should now. It was a gift.
I love it because the Morrigan, Celtic Goddess of Justice, and honorable Battle, and honorable Lamentation, speaks in the poem with the circular and expanded wisdom of a Goddess, the one who speaks far from the limited view of "revenge" and "consequences", but speaks rather from the wide spiral perspective of the evolution of the soul.
I also love the poem because I think it's so important now to open a way for the Warrior Goddesses, for the Morrigan, to come into our hearts and into our world, before too much, far, far too much, is lost. The next human evolution, I truly believe, is one of empathy, which to me means living within the Circle of life, feeling and sensing our connections on every level. We see the cycles, we see the ripples, we see, and gain the capacity to Circle, and Circle, and Circle, until, at last, we
"find our faces before we were born,
and drink from deep, deep waters."
The CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN
You who bring suffering to children:
May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your own innocence.
You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:
May you look into each face, and see a mirror. May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger, may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out. May you take that hand. May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are.
You tree-killers, you wasters:
May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands, the barren places you have made. And when you cannot walk one step further, may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green. And may you be remade by it's generosity.
And those who are greedy in a time of famine:
May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places, and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean.
Those who mistake power for love:
May you know true loneliness. And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour, may a line be cast to you, one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark. And may you hold on for dear life.
Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain
if it's not to your liking:
May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall. And may you rage, rage until you find your will. And may you learn to shape yourself.
And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are:
May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw. May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability.
May you know your Self. And may you be blessed by that communion.
And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice,
and again and again and again,
may you find your face before you were born.
And may you drink from deep, deep waters.
