She speaks to me of Peter Kingsley’s works (I’m reading now, Reality)–we contain everything inside ourselves–”this is the experience of utter stillness,more exquisite, more full, than anything under the sun.”

We find this same mythos of renewing water in Greek and Roman mythology. Once we see with the single eye, the fountain of liquid light flows in a toroidal form around the head ever flowing and renewing itself. A second smaller sphere sits on top of the larger. I can’t remember what this is called, but we see this smaller sphere replicated within many cultures by the knotting of the hair in a tight ball on top of the head.

After the rock is removed from pineal, the crown is able to flower open, a new spiritual ear forms from the foramens located near the pineal in the brain (“those with ears to hear let them hear”). In the poem, Levertov repeats “don’t say” four times, thus matching the brain physiology. The image is of four ears connecting top to bottom in the four directions creating a well of sorts. The sound with those who can hear, hear the sounds or “songs” of the universe, even meteors that enter the earths grid.

Throughout the poem there is an element of elevation, the “footholds allowing us to climb.” Spiritual mastery involves desire and persistence, as well as, allowing or breaking a pathway through any ego, false beliefs and emotional roadblocks so the energy fires upward through the spinal column. Once we incarnate in body, we are inundated with learning from the left brain, divine masculine. We learn to climb and crawl and define the world through language and physicality–the “footholds.” Reaching spiritual mastery is not possible until we meet the divine feminine, joining at last both sides of the self, the physical defined space with the expanse of the cosmos. We can see this with the two primary people in the poem, the speaker or the masculine principle, and the woman at the fountain or the feminine principle. The final resolution of the poem’s tension occurs at the end with the meeting of the speaker acting within the masculine principle joining the feminine principle. The mythical conflict is transformed to the ultimate union of divine marriage of the Self. This has nothing to do with being gay or straight, or marriage being defined as only between a man and a woman. This union is the marrying of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the feeding of this unified Self with the renewing waters from the fountain of liquid light.

Much love and light, Peg

Yes, it, “Don’t say, don’t say …” line–like magic power/potion I can’t seem to get it over; it is giving me good feeling; I find it healing

I very much like the said line repetited…needed to come back pleading our attention lest we forget

Thank you very much, Ivan for allowing us to enjoy such beautiful poem

What a heartening stream of hope , especially today
when winter just won’t go away, the wind bites like
knives and it’s tempting to let ice grip the heart.

And thanks too to the translator – too often anonymous and
unacknowledged.

‘ it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us…’

Beautiful, like the promise of spring.