![[moderator]](http://images.tribe.net/tribe/images/redesign/moderator_icon.gif){kind=icon}
March 18, 2008
In the sprit of my love for you, I want to share this poem for you. It is one of my eternal favorites.
Dance of the Seven Veils
This, the first veil, the scarlet
For my mother and all her sisters
Who recognize the blood rite, who know
Whick revelations could dismember the mosaic of this world
But fear the cost, who love me
But go veiled.
To them I sacrifice the first.
See where it pulses, a forbidden standard
Raised rebelliously above a conquered city.
This, the second veil, the violet,
For the kind and all his brothers
Who offer half their empires in return
For my possession, ifnorant hat I require
In its entirety what has always been my own.
To them I fling the second.
See where it flies, like royal spittle,
My laughter answering their lust.
This, the third veil, the cerulean,
For all the stillborn hopes arterial
Along my limbs, blue as the veins of my children
Never now to be conceived,
Blue as the shadows of hunger moulding the faces
Of those already living in hope of bread
Outside the gates of every palace.
To these I entrust the third,
See where it ripples like a salty mist
Ever the sea’s grief.
This, the fourth veil, the emerald,
For the false prophet and all his prisoners
Of envy, matricidal messiahs
Who turn in disgust from the female,
Rutting for death instead, for martyrdom
As hosted by their jealous god.
For them I discard the fourth.
See where it billows like indifferent grass, an obstinate renewing above the grave.
This, the fifth veil, the saffron,
For the soldier and all his followers,
Cowards who will slay me pretending to obey their orders
Other than their own, but desperate themselves
To cover my golden holy nakedness with their spiked shields
Before such splendor dazzles, delivers, and unmans them.
To my assassins I bequeath the fifth.
See where it flickers to their feet and lies, their only spoil.
This, the sixth veil, the white,
For myself, intended for a crown
Who chose instead this craft:
Each leap a calculation practiced
To exact, as if by effortless abandon,
The transcendent selves of those who witness it,
Like the lunar dancer drawing after her her tides.
Yet no audience, at the last, moves either of us:
To me, the sixth, the silver veil, I dedicate.
See where it floats, my spirit
Whirling with love about my flesh.
This, the seventh veil, transparent,
For the dance itself.
Unspeakable
As the letters of my stolen name,
Whitout color, as the air glows, palpable.
Only this presence, like a length of space,
A skin sloughed, a rendered breath.
To the dance alone the seventh veil is cast.
See where it shimmers,
A membrane shuddering open-
Spent, vacant now,
An afterbirth.
By Robin Morgan, 1962.
