meeting with the dark side of the moon

"So we do not descend to the bottom of the hill merely by seeing the dark side of ourself, or our friends, difficult as that is, Baba Yaga, in Russian tales, asks: Are you here to pursue a good deed or to shirk it? We reach the bottom when Baba Yaga's hostile boar energy has completely replaced - for a time - childlike eros which each of us felt when our mother set a breast to our mouth, or later set a cup of milk down for us at the table, or when our first marvelous girlfriend beckoned us to bed. These loves are all well; but descent is complete when both have been replaced by the boar-tusked, hog bristled, big-mouthed, skull-necklaced, insanely high-spirited energy of Baba Yaga.

Something wants us there, wants the meeting with the Dark Queen, wants the boar to open his mouth, wants Grendel's pool to fill with blood, wants the swords to melt, wants the Giantess to put the boy in her sack.

Young men in our culture often imagine, when they look forward to meeting Baba Yaga, that they can "kill" her. They imagine annihilation, total victory; but the stories make clear that such fantasies belong to the uninitiated men. The only solution to power of the witch is for the young man to develop energy as great as hers, as harsh, as wild, as shrewd, as clear in its desire. When a young man arrives at her house, proves himself to be up too her level of intensity, purpose, and respect for the truth, she will sometimes say, "Okay, what do you want to know?" -- Robert Bly from "Iron John"

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns

Locksley Hall (an excerpt)

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

...
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
...
. . . Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

Full Text

Long live the weeds

Inversnaid

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,

It rounds and rounds despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

"Darksom" = 'dark' + 'handsome', "Burn" = small stream, "Coop" = "enclosed hollow" (definition from Hopkins' notebook), "Twindles" = a mixture of 'twists', "Windpuff-bonnet" = froth which sits on the water like a hat; or rides it like a sail (an older meaning of bonnet), 'twitches' and 'dwindles', "Degged" = sprinkled (Scots dialect), "Groins" = curved edges, "Braes" = steep bank or hillside (Scots dialect),

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the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

- Antonio Machado

Translated by Robert Bly

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"