Ligsma Kirpe, originally from Latvia, will be celebrating her 90th birthday on Anzac Day. This poem comes from a Creative Studies Group, which she led 1983 – 1984. It was performed in Eurythmy at the 2004 Anthroposophical Conference in Melbourne.
Katherine Rudolph
COLOUR
Blue
The Blue…moves…in the distance….
and on the far horizon,
holding up strongly
the very dome of the sky
with the mighty sun
in his embrace,
backing out darkness from the sunlit world.
He cares also that
darkness gets some light,
lifting forth bits of it
upon the sunlit areas
and silvering the features
in the depths of shadows,
so we all can read
the names of each
After the sunset
the Blue enkindles stars
upholding the moon
to guard our rest.
For the blue cares
that the world has light.
Thick heavy clouds
are causing him anger.
Then he kicks through
with thunder and lightning.
Frost he arranges
in star-like patterns,
breaking icicles at times
into new forms that
emerge from his weaving
of darkness and light.
Or when a shape
gets swallowed by fire,
he guides its transmutation
by pulling the flame in
and guiding the soul
to the yonder world.
Blue serves as a bridge
between two worlds
joining spirit and matter.
When the sun shines
on winter days,
the whole earth lies
enwrapped in the Blue’s love
for her dreams and memories
on the last season’s warmth.
In her night-like lap
Earth broods and nurses
seeds, roots, decaying bodies
which had their life and colours
entombed by the Fall,
longing….longing to become
remade and reborn.
Everything waits hoping
for a Christmas star
to strike out of the Blue
which holds the threads
from past to future.
Yellow
Then a bell rings.
A star is alarming
a seeds inner core
with light activity,
germinating its own
warmth and will
to crack and to break,
to explode its hard shell,
rolling aside
the husks of entombment,
rousing the rocky flesh
of Earth to the light above,
the Yellow comes to birth.
It is Easter for the seed,
peeping out freely
into the sunlight
to yell out and around,
to yell up and below,
being uplifted
by the yellow sunlight,
as it licks the soil
from the coolness,
moulding the green leaves
in a new globe
filled with light.
There one can meet
livelier beings:
wind, bees, butterflies
and the very
being of Sun,
which imparts everyone
with its own self,
joyous in giving,
loving and blending
soul into soul
by its warmth.
The Yellow gives out
its own being,
and the Earth likewise
blooms out her forces
towards the Sun.
Human souls also loosen their fetters
expanding towards
primeval state
of Paradise where:
all the God’s creatures are
swaying in the Sun:
flower blossoms, ears of corn
tree-tops of the mighty forests,
elder people, little children,
all young maidens, all young men.
Light in itself
we never know,
but its weavings
with the darkness of earth
gives us the feeling
of the many colours,-
a meaning to life.
Sunshine appears
as our best friend,
extending her hand to everyone,-
the innocent and the wonton,-
wakening, reinforcing,
comforting, lifting up
with her life-sustaining
yellow glow of joy.
She frees us too
from our own enclosure.
She opens the ways
to new enlightenment.
We all become
as brothers and sisters
while yellow sunbeam
dances.
Red
‘Til one bright day
her shine is struck
upon a smooth object
throwing back
her own good will.
“A bottle in dry grass.”
The sunbeam mirrors
her own splendour
upon this obstacle.
Through it she shines,
into it she shines
according to the laws
of her own being
To dissolve, alleviate
any gravity she finds.
But now, look!
Some of the light
is trapped there
by that tricky
man-made thing!
Those very solid walls
force themselves upon her.
She tries to get out,
Is knocked back again
upon her own,…upon her own
shortcomings and despair.
Thus, she comes to feel
the might of light’s opponents
bottled up there
on the dry grass
by the roadside.
This should remind us all
of our soul’s descent
from the yonder Sun
to the body of flesh
filled with life,
yet possessed also
by devils of hell.
How does the soul
enkindle her fire
in the blood-stream
to carry on battles
between heaven and hell?
How does the blood
find its pulse
to carry on life
for new endeavours?
Pressed by the grip
of the adverse forces
the embottled light-beam
goes through an agony
of changes in her nature.
There is no way forward,
There is no way back,
no way up, nor below,
but the counterpart of all,-
the very nothingness
as a grip for
one’s own self-centre
filled with the power
of heaven and hell
in a burning heat
capable to beat,
revolve and to wreck
any hindrance
by a sudden
quick explosion!
Reddening with rage
of fierce fire which
sets hunger to its guts
out it gushes, swelling,
roaring and devouring
by its sparks and flames
everything they bite on…
that had once been grown
by the very delicate
love of Sun and Earth,
Which the…savage one
Meets but through…. Death,
“What have you done?”
Conclusion, another voice:
Such fires feed on
the perishable only
freeing the soul forces
for a new life.
And when the violence
of the absorbing flames
is tamed and exhausted,
reds of calmer hues
glow through the ashes,
revealing to us
the meaning of spirit
which masters the self
in our similarly
red hued blood.
Ligsma Kirpe