Truth-and-Darkness                                                            Page 46

Judith Wright, in her constant search for truth, is always exploring the

relational. In her love poems this is easily seen . In "Bora Ring" and in the

nature poems of birds and animals and fish it is equally evident that she sees as

one the whole web of existence and everyone and everything in it, including the

darkest "curse." She does not see "truth" as something full of light but accepts

darkness and absence as intrinsic aspects of one reality.

The intersection of presence and absence is the haunting motif of "Ishtar".

(C.P. p.101).  Ishtar is the goddess who presides over birth, nurturing,

enlightenment and other human affairs like war and peace and justice:

When I first saw a woman after childbirth

the room was full of your glance who had just gone away.

And when the mare was bearing her foal

you were with her but I did not see your face.

When in fear I became a woman

I first felt your hand.

When the shadow of the future first fell across me

it was your shadow, my grave and hooded attendant.

Here again is the shadow. It falls across birth, growth and time. Its presence

(as absence) fills the room like the "glance" of life itself - especially life in birth

and life in becoming woman. In both these events there is bleeding and pain.

The "room", the space, where birth has taken place is a space where blood and

the chaos of pain intersect with the joy of birth. The shadow of the goddess,

her presence in absence, is the source of life and creativity as well as the source

of "inexpressible knowledge" - "inexpressible" and so known outside of

language. The "shadow" is friendly to space and to silence.

There is a sense of space or distance between the goddess, Ishtar, and the poet

To "deny or affirm", to "submit or rebel" makes no difference to the life and

death process: "the event will still happen." The mind is of no concern, nor are

thoughts nor hopes:

You neither know nor care for the truth of my heart;

but the truth of my body has all to do with you.