Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Narcissus (Vanity/Narcissism)

Range of Narcissus cultivars

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“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. ” ~ Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving 

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.  ~ George Eliot 

“. . . . 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. . . .   
'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.'”  ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - "Persephone".jpg

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Midweek Motif ~

Narcissus (Vanity / Narcissisum)

The narcissus is one of December's birth flowers.  According to Greek myth, it is the flower that grew when the vain young man Narcissus drowned in the lake in which he admired his own reflection.  There's more to the story--Echo, goddesses, love,  and, related to it is the story of Persephone and Demeter, a pomegranate, death, winter and summer.  Picking a narcissus flower separated Persephone from her peers, and Hades kidnapped her.  Her story associates her with the life cycle of plants.  

Do any of these stories have meaning to you? 

If not, hold with the beautiful flower itself.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem in response to the themes of one of the images included in this prompt.  (You may also provide images of your own that relate to narcissus and/or vanity).  

Demeter and Persephone :
"Demeter rejoiced, for her daughter was by her side"

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Persephone, Falling

by Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others!  She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished.  No one heard her.
No one!  She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don’t answer to strangers.  Stick
with your playmates.  Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens.  This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

(In Mother Love by Rita Dove. © 1995, W.W. Norton & Company.  Used with permission.)

Echo And Narcissus, John William Waterhouse (1903)

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Narcissus

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Encircled by her arms as by a shell,

she hears her being murmur,

while forever he endures

the outrage of his too pure image...

Wistfully following their example,

nature re-enters herself;

contemplating its own sap, the flower

becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens...

It's the return of all desire that enters

toward all life embracing itself from afar...

Where does it fall? Under the dwindling

surface, does it hope to renew a center? 

Sylvia Plath | Source

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Mirror
by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. 
Whatever I see I swallow immediately 
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. 
I am not cruel, only truthful- 
The eye of the little god, four cornered. 
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.  
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long 
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. 
Faces and darkness separate us over and over. 


Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, 
Searching my reaches for what she really is. 
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. 
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. 
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. 
I am important to her. She comes and goes. 
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. 
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman 
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity.
 Still Life by Jan Vermeulen (1653)

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Song VII (“My song has put off her adornments”)

BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

My song has put off her adornments.

She has no pride of dress and decoration. 

Ornaments would mar our union;

they would come between thee and me; 

their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. 

O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. 

Only let me make my life simple and straight, 

like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

Narcissus ~  Paperwhite

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and

visit others in the spirit of the community— 

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be Celebration. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ A Grain Of Sand

“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” — Robert W. Service

Source

“Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains”— Paulo Coelho

“In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand

In every leaf that trembles in every grain of sand”— Bob Dylan

“Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.”— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I became Latina

Midweek Motif ~ A Grain of Sand 

 I read somewhere, “Sand is serious and entertaining”.

In fact sands could be fascinating story tellers of the distant past.

In 1922, a famous necklace with a scarab beetle carved from a glowing, yellow-green, gem-like material which could not be recognized at the time discovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb, came to be known as a unique silica glass (28 million years old and 98% pure, from a particular part of the Libyan desert) in the 1990’s.

There’s a realm of fantasy under our feet when we walk on a beach. We are unaware how the meiofauna there, are striving hard to stop the beach going anoxic [starved of oxygen], in their home of a grain of sand. For them only the sparkling shores have not yet turned into a sticky, stinking mudflat.

A single grain of sand matters in this grand scheme of our universe.

Let A Grain of Sand find its way into your lines today J

Auguries of Innocence

by William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage 

Puts all Heaven in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons 

Shudders Hell thr' all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate 

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road 

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

Each outcry of the hunted Hare 

A fibre from the Brain does tear 

A Skylark wounded in the wing 

A Cherubim does cease to sing  

The rest of the poem is here 

   

 View With A Grain Of Sand

by Wislawa Szymborska

We call it a grain of sand,

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine, without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch means nothing to it.

It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it, it is not different from falling on anything else

with no assurance that it has finished falling

or that it is falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake,

but the view doesn’t view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,

and its shore exists shorelessly.

The water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beheath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it, its only reason being

that it blows.

A second passes.

A second second.

A third.

But they’re three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like courier with urgent news.

But that’s just our simile.

The character is inverted, his hasts is make believe,

his news inhuman.    

A Grain of Sand

by Robert William Service

If starry space no limit knows

And sun succeeds to sun,

There is no reason to suppose

Our earth the only one.

'Mid countless constellations cast

A million worlds may be,

With each a God to bless or blast

And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so

To guide each vital stream,

With over all to boss the show

A Deity supreme.

Such magnitudes oppress my mind;

From cosmic space it swings;

So ultimately glad to find

Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,

While round the earth careens,

I hold a single grain of sand

And wonder what it means.

Ah! If I had the eyes to see,

And brain to understand,

I think Life's mystery might be

Solved in this grain of sand.  

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ News Media)

. . . . 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Halloween, or Celebrating the Dead

source

Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a  special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special  feel because it was All Hallows' Eve.

― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“So light a fire!" Harry choked. "Yes...of course...but there's  no wood!" ...  "HAVE YOU GONE MAD!" Ron bellowed.  "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT!” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition 

take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges. 

― Paulo Coelho

We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.

― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: 

The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

Midweek Motif ~ Halloween 
or Celebrating the Dead

(31 October ― 2 November)

Your Challenge:  Show your truth about this holiday in a poem that tells a story.

Is Halloween a children's holiday, as marketed in the USA?

Trick-or-treating

A Wiccan or Witches' New Year?

Oweynagat ('cave of the cats'), one of the many 'gateways to the Otherword' from whence beings and spirits were said to have emerged on Samhain.

All Saints Day and/or The Day of the Dead?  

On All Hallows' Eve, Christians in some parts of the world visit graveyards to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones.

source

Something else?   Show your truth about this holiday in a poem that tells a story. 

For those who are new to Poets United:  

1. Post your Halloween, or Celebrating the Dead poem on your site, and then link it here.
2. If you use a picture include its link.  
3. Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
4. Leave a comment here.
5. Visit and comment on our poems.

(The next Midweek Motif will be Bonfires.)

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