Spiders are goddesses too?

Question

Arachne...(full version) *


Thinking back on ages when I was angry,
Spinning anger in webs...
Catching my reflection in bits of
Shattered dew,
Thinking how funny my thousand eyes
Shone
And how sad it was that they saw...
How horribly, greedily, they drank in the
Poison of
Sight.

Catching my reflection and watching it
Beat veined wings
Against the crystal threads of my home,
My anger,
Spun from my body and sticky with
Millions of years
Of feeling nothing
As soft eyes closed...

What day was it when the first dry
Wings fell to the ground, betraying me
To the trusting things as
Predator...

What day was it when the butterflies,
The kind, lovely beings, ceased their
Visits, and
Cursed my
Sight...

If, by spinning, I could empty
My belly of anger,
I would web the stars...
Then stalk the highest corners of
Eternity...
Crawling on my belly into
The House of God.


Elysabeth Faslund...Poemhunter.com

Answer 1

I love it. It is a beautiful metaphor. Your anger is apparently part of the past now, but I love the way you see it as part of yourself, and accept yourself the way you are. It is soothing, really, even if is about anger. But this is also thanks to your choice of words.

Answer 2

Nice one. There's a real angst underlying a poem that depicts sight as a poison. I like the parts about betraying one's baser nature; something lamentable yet inevitable.
People may say, no meter, no rhyme - let them. The best poems often make their own poetic sense in the way that befits them.

Does the title work, though? Arachne evokes a being nobler than this, and might change your last line to something like Olympus. Your ending is well done - even the non-religious can feel the twisted dream of redemption here.

(Also, if a little entomology can interject here - spiders have eight eyes, not the compound eyes of insects, but perhaps that shouldn't ruin the alien image created here. What "soft eyes" closed, here? Those of prey? Insects can't shut their eyes, so you may want a word like darkened or dimmed, unless you are talking metaphorically of people.)

The poem reminds me greatly of Tolkien's tale in The Silmarillion of the great spider Ungoliant, which did try to devour even starlight in a sense (the 'flame imperishable' of a Silmaril), and whose blind hunger knew no bounds. An embodiment of materialism or consumerism gone mad. The poem gives us hope that, through our actions, our consumer culture too could yet redeem itself.

Answer 3

So very sad but then to have so much faith and trust is remarkable.