{"id":7528,"date":"2020-03-05T12:06:58","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T12:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7528"},"modified":"2020-03-05T12:06:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T12:06:58","slug":"poetry-kathleen-scott-goldingay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/03\/05\/poetry-kathleen-scott-goldingay\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry &#8211; Kathleen Scott Goldingay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Lamps of the Virgins<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>from Bearers of the Broken Vessel<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At dawn, weaving through hills,<br \/>\ngo Daughters of Jerusalem in white,<br \/>\nfaces illumed by the flames<br \/>\nof their lamps.<br \/>\nThey sing a song about lovers,<br \/>\nbecome a string of dancing lights.<\/p>\n<p>At dawn, before babes awakened<br \/>\nand bawled to take suckle,<br \/>\ntheir mothers lit fires<br \/>\nand filled the girl\u2019s lamps.<br \/>\n\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d<br \/>\nasks a sister too young for a lamp.<br \/>\n\u201cTo remember, to remember,<br \/>\nthe daughter of Jep-thah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you crying?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThe daughter of Jep-thah<br \/>\nran dancing,<br \/>\nshaking her tambourine.<br \/>\nShe was the first<br \/>\nto greet her father,<br \/>\nreturning victorious in battle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut why are you weeping?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWe go to the hills like she did,<br \/>\nwith our friends.<br \/>\nWe go for one who is soon<br \/>\nto kiss her father goodbye<br \/>\nand leave to be married.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jep-thah, whose mother<br \/>\nwas without blessing,<br \/>\nhad not trusted Yahweh<br \/>\nto hand to him his victory.<br \/>\nHe had sworn an oath:<br \/>\nin return for winning my battle,<br \/>\nI will give Yahweh a gift-<br \/>\nthe first soul<br \/>\nwho runs out from my house-<br \/>\nas a burnt offering, whole.<\/p>\n<p>The daughter of Jep-thah<br \/>\nran dancing,<br \/>\nshaking her tambourine.<br \/>\nShe was the first<br \/>\nto greet her father,<br \/>\nreturning victorious in battle.<\/p>\n<p>Jep-thah tore his cloak<br \/>\nand fell to the ground.<br \/>\n\u201cI love you, my daughter.\u201d<br \/>\nShe knelt,<br \/>\nput a kiss on his forehead,<br \/>\n\u201cI love you, my Abba.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On hearing what Yahweh<br \/>\nwas promised,<br \/>\nJep-thah\u2019s daughter did not flee.<br \/>\nShe avowed,<br \/>\n\u201cHere I am, Yahweh, I\u2019m yours!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But first, with her friends,<br \/>\nshe climbed up in the hills<br \/>\nto grieve,<br \/>\nsinging, \u201cMy love will not perish<br \/>\nin flames.\u201d<br \/>\nShe would never know the tug<br \/>\nfrom the cry of a babe.<\/p>\n<p>At dawn, a soldier\u2019s widow weeps,<br \/>\nlooks out her latticed window.<br \/>\nShe sees the flickering lamps<br \/>\ndance on the hill and remembers.<br \/>\nShe puts a kiss on her babe\u2019s<br \/>\nwaking warm cheekand sings to her daughter<br \/>\nof Yahweh.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Lamps of the Virgins by Kathleen Scott Goldingay by Cassandra Voices\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F771119176&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Feature Image: William Blake, Wise And Foolish Virgins, 1826, Metropolitan Museum, New York.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lamps of the Virgins from Bearers of the Broken Vessel At dawn, weaving through hills, go Daughters of Jerusalem in white, faces illumed by the flames of their lamps. They sing a song about lovers, become a string of dancing lights. At dawn, before babes awakened and bawled to take suckle, their mothers lit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":7511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4837,7341,10238],"class_list":["post-7528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-jep-thah","tag-poetry","tag-yahweh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}