{"id":114586,"date":"2022-05-24T09:27:08","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T16:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=114586"},"modified":"2022-10-24T14:53:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T21:53:37","slug":"the-river","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=114586","title":{"rendered":"The River"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Laurie Efrein Kahalas<\/strong>, a former member of Peoples Temple, wrote this poem in 1990\/1991, shortly before she met the love of her life, Dan Kahalas. <\/em><\/p>\n

(Laurie is a regular contributor to<\/em> the jonestown report. Her other articles in this edition are <\/em>It\u2019s the Driver\u2019s Inset, Stupid!<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Final Witness: The Legacy of Marceline Jones<\/em><\/a>. Her previous writings may be found <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>. She <\/em>can be reached through <\/em>dan_laurie44@comcast.net<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Author’s Note<\/strong>:\u00a0 In Greek mythology, the Styx\u00a0was a large, ominous river across which the ferryman Charon transported dead souls towards their final destination.\u00a0 The river flowed as the boundary between Earth and the Underworld \u2013 not Hades, but hardly a highway to Heaven either. The river had powers of its own, in that it supposedly imbued those who bathed in it with invincibility.\u00a0 This was where the mother of Achilles \u2013 who would become a great warrior \u2013 dipped her infant child, to make him invulnerable.\u00a0 But she had to hold him by one of his heels to dip him, which was where an arrow struck him in battle during the Trojan War, causing a fatal wound. Thus “Achilles’ Heel” came to mark a human’s most vulnerable point.\u00a0 Apt metaphors all round for the trials of profound grief.<\/p>\n

The River<\/strong><\/p>\n

Charon, dark father,
\nLast guardian of this shattered fate!
\nI tremble…
\nyour shadow…
\nthis darkness…
\nThat they, not I, are thine!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The journey’s end begins.
\nStark sounds the clarion call of this
\nthrice-darkened day.
\nYour words both quavering and fierce, rendezvous in immeasured beats,
\ntheir tangled counterpoint haunts the lone ravens’ cries:
\nThey pick through the ruins, haunting ice caverns of a quarter-light day,
\nfleeing down the river of a blackened night —
\npeaceless, senseless, shadowless…<\/p>\n

Half priest, half brute, you utter
\na benediction of worlds in unremittent pain,
\nseared now with burnings alien to the human tongue:
\nthe parch of caws, bereft of vowels, choked and dry,
\nthe fierce rattling of crossed swords,
\ndisjointed epitaphs shattering through their dissonant terrain.<\/p>\n

This earth has not moved,
\nNor you, my dark mentor,
\nTurned against the bow to
\nhalt this iciest of descents.
\nNor can I rail against the grotesque finality.
\nYou sink like quicksand as I cling,
\npowerless,
\nto the hull of your over-laden boat,
\nparched with salt-stung tears and the pale glistening of a lost refrain.<\/p>\n

The river winds serpentine,
\nunyielding in its ceaseless flow,
\nits currents nevermore inclining to the light of day.
\nLike choked, steeped bellows,
\nlong, mourning cries precede the wake,
\npour down the river’s inky path,
\nrushing inexorably to be
\nenfolded by the devouring sea.<\/p>\n

The pulsebeat of my heart quickens and dims:
\nthe low undercurrent moans,
\nthe chilling dread.
\nHow I tremble at your inky blackness,
\nterrified you will not speak,
\nmore terrified still that you will.<\/p>\n

The ice salt air, the towering rush of blanketing chill
\nstills the fragile arbiter of breath I call my heart.
\nComfortless, I beseech you turn.
\nSo frail am I, so tenuous,
\nso adrift amidst the buffeting of your watery siege.<\/p>\n

So paralyze too my unuttered song.
\nRender me numb,
\nas mercy for the heaving, receding hour,
\nwhile I parce the irrevocable bridge between dry land
\nand the inevitable trespass of your haunted sea,
\nunrelieved by glints of light, or space, or misty rain.<\/p>\n

Lower me slowly.
\nI cannot see but for you,
\nthe only transport this wanton wanderer can sustain.<\/p>\n

I move as one suffused in dreams,
\nswift in pace, yet devoid of time;
\nimmovable, yet light and fleet;
\nunseen in motion, yet
\ndizzied by intensities of power and height.<\/p>\n

No one will greet such a statue of untrammeled marble,
\nfrozen gesture.
\nMock mourners will dress in white
\nto line your shore.
\nLike roses white as shimmering milkweed,
\nthey cling to murky perfumes,
\nto scorn the scent of slaughtered dreams,
\nto banish the wicked,
\nto exile the essence of your charge post haste.<\/p>\n

Down this river of haunting smoke and graying afterlives,
\nyour bodies linger.<\/p>\n

I travel just a little way with thee.
\nThen, webbed in distillates of Moon Mother’s harrowing light,
\nyou slide uneasy and frail,
\ntowards an alien embrace.
\nAnd the river dost not sing.<\/p>\n

I sink….
\nAnd my bones shudder….
\nAnd my heart shall never rise again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Laurie Efrein Kahalas, a former member of Peoples Temple, wrote this poem in 1990\/1991, shortly before she met the love of her life, Dan Kahalas. (Laurie is a regular contributor to the jonestown report. Her other articles in this edition are It\u2019s the Driver\u2019s Inset, Stupid! and Final Witness: The Legacy of Marceline Jones. Her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":83654,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-114586","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114586"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118201,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114586\/revisions\/118201"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}