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A Ballad Of Boding
Christina Rossetti There are sleeping dreams and waking dreams; What seems is not always as it seems. I looked out of my window in the sweet new morning, And there I saw three barges of manifold adorning Went sailing toward the East: The first had sails like fire, The next like glittering wire, But sackcloth were the sails of the least; And all the crews made music, and two had spread a feast. The first choir breathed in flutes, And fingered soft guitars; The second won from lutes Harmonious chords and jars, With drums for stormy bars: But the third was all of harpers and scarlet trumpeters; Notes of triumph, then An alarm again, As for onset, as for victory, rallies, stirs, Peace at last and glory to the vanquishers. The first barge showed for figurehead a Love with wings; The second showed for figurehead a Worm with stings; The third, a Lily tangled to a Rose which clings. The first bore for freight gold and spice and down; The second bore a sword, a sceptre, and a crown; The third, a heap of earth gone to dust and brown. Winged Love meseemed like Folly in the face; Stinged Worm meseemed loathly in his place; Lily and Rose were flowers of grace. Merry went the revel of the fire-sailed crew, Singing, feasting, dancing to and fro: Pleasures ever changing, ever graceful, ever new; Sighs, but scarce of woe; All the sighing Wooed such sweet replying; All the sighing, sweet and low, Used to come and go For more pleasure, merely so. Yet at intervals some one grew tired Of everything desired, And sank, I knew not whither, in sorry plight, Out of sight. The second crew seemed ever Wider-visioned, graver, More distinct of purpose, more sustained of will; With heads erect and proud, And voices sometimes loud; With endless tacking, counter-tacking, All things grasping, all things lacking, It would seem; Ever shifting helm, or sail, or shroud, Drifting on as in a dream. Hoarding to their utmost bent, Feasting to their fill, Yet gnawed by discontent, Envy, hatred, malice, on their road they went. Their freight was not a treasure, Their music not a pleasure; The sword flashed, cleaving through their bands, Sceptre and crown changed hands. The third crew as they went Seemed mostly different; They toiled in rowing, for to them the wind was contrary, As all the world might see. They labored at the oar, While on their heads they bore The fiery stress of sunshine more and more. They labored at the oar hand-sore, Till rain went splashing, And spray went dashing, Down on them, and up on them, more and more. Their sails were patched and rent, Their masts were bent, In peril of their lives they worked and went. For them no feast was spread, No soft luxurious bed Scented and white, No crown or sceptre hung in sight; In weariness and painfulness, In thirst and sore distress, They rowed and steered from left to right With all their might. Their trumpeters and harpers round about Incessantly played out, And sometimes they made answer with a shout; But oftener they groaned or wept, And seldom paused to eat, and seldom slept. I wept for pity watching them, but more I wept heart-sore Once and again to see Some weary man plunge overboard, and swim To Love or Worm ship floating buoyantly: And there all welcomed him. The ships steered each apart and seemed to scorn each other, Yet all the crews were interchangeable; Now one man, now another, —Like bloodless spectres some, some flushed by health,— Changed openly, or changed by stealth, Scaling a slippery side, and scaled it well. The most left Love ship, hauling wealth Up Worm ship’s side; While some few hollow-eyed Left either for the sack-sailed boat; But this, though not remote, Was worst to mount, and whoso left it once Scarce ever came again, But seemed to loathe his erst companions, And wish and work them bane. Then I knew (I know not how) there lurked quicksands full of dread, Rocks and reefs and whirlpools in the water-bed, Whence a waterspout Instantaneously leaped out, Roaring as it reared its head. Soon I spied a something dim, Many-handed, grim, That went flitting to and fro the first and second ship; It puffed their sails full out With puffs of smoky breath From a smouldering lip, And cleared the waterspout Which reeled roaring round about Threatening death. With a horny hand it steered, And a horn appeared On its sneering head upreared Haughty and high Against the blackening lowering sky. With a hoof it swayed the waves; They opened here and there, Till I spied deep ocean graves Full of skeletons That were men and women once Foul or fair; Full of things that creep And fester in the deep And never breathe the clean life-nurturing air. The third bark held aloof From the Monster with the hoof, Despite his urgent beck, And fraught with guile Abominable his smile; Till I saw him take a flying leap on to that deck. Then full of awe, With these same eyes I saw His head incredible retract its horn Rounding like babe’s new born, While silvery phosphorescence played About his dis-horned head. The sneer smoothed from his lip, He beamed blandly on the ship; All winds sank to a moan, All waves to a monotone (For all these seemed his realm), While he laid a strong caressing hand upon the helm. Then a cry well nigh of despair Shrieked to heaven, a clamor of desperate prayer. The harpers harped no more, While the trumpeters sounded sore An alarm to wake the dead from their bed: To the rescue, to the rescue, now or never, To the rescue, O ye living, O ye dead, Or no more help or hope for ever!— The planks strained as though they must part asunder, The masts bent as though they must dip under, And the winds and the waves at length Girt up their strength, And the depths were laid bare, And heaven flashed fire and volleyed thunder Through the rain-choked air, And sea and sky seemed to kiss In the horror and the hiss Of the whole world shuddering everywhere. Lo! a Flyer swooping down With wings to span the globe, And splendor for his robe And splendor for his crown. He lighted on the helm with a foot of fire, And spun the Monster overboard: And that monstrous thing abhorred, Gnashing with balked desire, Wriggled like a worm infirm Up the Worm Of the loathly figurehead. There he crouched and gnashed; And his head re-horned, and gashed From the other’s grapple, dripped bloody red. I saw that thing accurst Wreak his worst On the first and second crew: Some with baited hook He angled for and took, Some dragged overboard in a net he threw, Some he did to death With hoof or horn or blasting breath. I heard a voice of wailing Where the ships went sailing, A sorrowful voice prevailing Above the sound of the sea, Above the singers’ voices, And musical merry noises; All songs had turned to sighing, The light was failing, The day was dying— Ah me, That such a sorrow should be! There was sorrow on the sea and sorrow on the land When Love ship went down by the bottomless quicksand To its grave in the bitter wave. There was sorrow on the sea and sorrow on the land When Worm ship went to pieces on the rock-bound strand, And the bitter wave was its grave. But land and sea waxed hoary In whiteness of a glory Never told in story Nor seen by mortal eye, When the third ship crossed the bar Where whirls and breakers are, And steered into the splendors of the sky; That third bark and that least Which had never seemed to feast, Yet kept high festival above sun and moon and star. |
With you in thought
The Rose Christina Rossetti The lily has a smooth stalk, Will never hurt your hand; But the rose upon her brier Is lady of the land. There’s sweetness in an apple tree, And profit in the corn; But lady of all beauty Is a rose upon a thorn. When with moss and honey She tips her bending brier, And half unfolds her glowing heart, She sets the world on fire. |
Femme Fatale
how did you know
i had a weakness for dykes with short hair and broken hearts for women who walk down the street like they have a right to be there or maybe a baby butch bold enough to take what she wants without asking BUTCH BULLDAGGER BALL-BUSTING D-Y-K-E did i scare you did they hurt you with those names? come here, honey, let me show you just how sweet those words can sound in the mouth of a woman who wants you ---Susan Kane, from "the femme mystique" Lady_Wu....and baby, whoever you are, i want you |
Tonight
BY AGHA SHAHID ALI Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar —Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight? Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight? Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—“ ”to make Me beautiful—“ “Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight. God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar— All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight. Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken Only we can convert the infidel tonight. Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities multiply me at once under your spell tonight. He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven. He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight. In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day— I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight. Executioners near the woman at the window. Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight. The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight. My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all? This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight. And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee— God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight. |
Common Magic
Your best friend falls in love and her brain turns to water. You can watch her lips move, making the customary sounds, but you can see they're merely words, flimsy as bubbles rising from some golden sea where she swims sleek and exotic as a mermaid. It's always like that. You stop for lunch in a crowded restaurant and the waitress floats toward you. You can tell she doesn't care whether you have the baked or french-fried and you wonder if your voice comes in bubbles too. It's not women either. Or love for that matter. The old man across from you on the bus holds a young child on his knee; he is singing to her and his voice is a small boy turning somersaults in the green country of his blood. It's only when the driver calls his stop that he emerges into this puzzle of brick and tiny hedges. Only then you notice his shaking hands, his need of the child to guide him home. All over the city you move in your own seasons through the seasons of others: old women faces clawed by weather you can't feel clack dry tongues at passersby while adolescente seethe in their glassy atmospheres of anger. In parks, the children are alien life-forms, rooted in the galaxies they're grown through to get here. Their games weave the interface and their laughter tickles that part of your brain where smells are hidden and the nuzzling textures of things. It's a wonder that anything gets done at all: a mechanic flails at the muffler of your car through whatever storm he's trapped inside and the mailman stares at numbers from the haze of a distant summer. Yet somehow letters arrive and buses remember their routes. Banks balance. Mangoes ripen on the supermarket shelves. Everyone manages. You gulp the thin air of this planet as if it were the only one you knew. Even the earth you're standing on seems solid enough. It's always the chance word, unthinking gesture that unlocks the face before you. Reveals intricate countries deep within the eyes. The hidden lives, like sudden miracles, that breathe there. Bronwen Wallace (p.s. the last poem I posted is by L. Cohen; forgot to put the author!) |
A Study (A Soul) by Christina Rossetti
She stands as pale as Parian statues stand; Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay, And felt her strength above the Roman sway, And felt the aspic writhing in her hand. Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land, For dim beyond it looms the light of day; Her feet are steadfast; all the arduous way That foot-track hath not wavered on the sand. She stands there like a beacon thro' the night, A pale clear beacon where the storm-drift is; She stands alone, a wonder deathly white; She stands there patient, nerved with inner might, Indomitable in her feebleness, Her face and will athirst against the light. |
By The Sea by Christina Rossetti
Why does the sea moan evermore? Shut out from heaven it makes its moan, It frets against the boundary shore; All earth's full rivers cannot fill The sea, that drinking thirsteth still. Sheer miracles of loveliness Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed: Anemones, salt, passionless, Blow flower-like; just enough alive To blow and multiply and thrive. Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike, Encrusted live things argus-eyed, All fair alike, yet all unlike, Are born without a pang, and die Without a pang, and so pass by. |
Is/Not
Love is not a profession genteel or otherwise sex is not dentistry the slick filling of aches and cavities you are not my doctor you are not my cure, nobody has that power, you are merely a fellow/traveller Give up this medical concern, buttoned, attentive, permit yourself anger and permit me mine which needs neither your approval nor your suprise which does not need to be made legal which is not against a disease but agaist you, which does not need to be understood or washed or cauterized, which needs instead to be said and said. Permit me the present tense. Margaret Atwood |
Compendium of Lost Objects - Nicole Cooley
Not the butterfly wing, the semiprecious stones,
the shard of mirror, not the cabinet of curiosities built with secret drawers to reveal and conceal its contents, but the batture, the rope swing, the rusted barge sunk at the water’s edge or the park’s Live Oaks you walked through with the forbidden man or the pink-shuttered house on the streetcar line where you were married or the green shock of land off I-10, road leading you away from home. Not any of this but a cot at the Superdome sunk in a dumpster and lace valances from a Lakeview kitchen where water rose six feet high inside and a refrigerator wrapped in duct tape lying in the dirt of a once-yard and a Blue Roof and a house marked 0 and a kitchen clock stopped at the time the hurricane hit. Because, look, none of this fits in a dark wood cabinet for safekeeping. This is an installation for dismantling —never seen again. |
In Blackwater Woods
"Look, the trees
are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go." — Mary Oliver |
POEM
The Testing-Tree by Stanley Kunitz 1 On my way home from school up tribal Providence Hill past the Academy ball park where I could never hope to play I scuffed in the drainage ditch among the sodden seethe of leaves hunting for perfect stones rolled out of glacial time into my pitcher’s hand; then sprinted lickety- split on my magic Keds from a crouching start, scarcely touching the ground with my flying skin as I poured it on for the prize of the mastery over that stretch of road, with no one no where to deny when I flung myself down that on the given course I was the world’s fastest human. 2 Around the bend that tried to loop me home dawdling came natural across a nettled field riddled with rabbit-life where the bees sank sugar-wells in the trunks of the maples and a stringy old lilac more than two stories tall blazing with mildew remembered a door in the long teeth of the woods. All of it happened slow: brushing the stickseed off, wading through jewelweed strangled by angel’s hair, spotting the print of the deer and the red fox’s scats. Once I owned the key to an umbrageous trail thickened with mosses where flickering presences gave me right of passage as I followed in the steps of straight-backed Massassoit soundlessly heel-and-toe practicing my Indian walk. 3 Past the abandoned quarry where the pale sun bobbed in the sump of the granite, past copperhead ledge, where the ferns gave foothold, I walked, deliberate, on to the clearing, with the stones in my pocket changing to oracles and my coiled ear turned to the slightest leaf-stir. I had kept my appointment. There stood in the shadow, at fifty measured paces, of the inexhaustible oak, tyrant and target, Jehovah of acorns, watchtower of the thunders, that locked King Philip’s War in its annulated core under the cut of my name. Father wherever you are I have only three throws bless my good right arm. In the haze of afternoon, while the air flowed saffron, I played my game for keeps— for love, for poetry, and for eternal life— after the trials of summer. 4 In the recurring dream my mother stands in her bridal gown under the burning lilac, with Bernard Shaw and Bertie Russell kissing her hands; the house behind her is in ruins; she is wearing an owl’s face and makes barking noises. Her minatory finger points. I pass through the cardboard doorway askew in the field and peer down a well where an albino walrus huffs. He has the gentlest eyes. If the dirt keeps sifting in, staining the water yellow why should I be blamed? Never try to explain. That single Model A sputtering up the grade unfurled a highway behind where the tanks maneuver, revolving their turrets. In a murderous time the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn. I am looking for the trail. Where is my testing-tree? Give me back my stones! |
Tell all the the truth but tell it slant .
Tell all the truth but tell it slant-
Success in circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb Surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind- (Emily Dickinson) Lady_Wu |
Lost in the forest....
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--- and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. ~ Pablo Neruda ~ . |
A Brook in the City
by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) THE farm house lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength And impulse, having dipped a finger length And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed A flower to try its currents where they crossed. The meadow grass could be cemented down From growing under pavements of a town; The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. Is water wood to serve a brook the same? How else dispose of an immortal force No longer needed? Staunch it at its source With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone In fetid darkness still to live and run-- And all for nothing it had ever done Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps That such a brook ran water. But I wonder If from its being kept forever under The thoughts may not have risen that so keep This new-built city from both work and sleep. |
Self Pity
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. |
Alone
by Edgar Allan Poe (published 1875) From childhood's hour I have not been As others were -- I have not seen As others saw -- I could not bring My passions from a common spring -- From the same source I have not taken My sorrow -- I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone -- And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone -- Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn Of a most stormy life -- was drawn From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still -- From the torrent, or the fountain -- From the red cliff of the mountain -- From the sun that 'round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold -- From the lightning in the sky As it pass'd me flying by -- From the thunder, and the storm -- And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view -- |
I love Poe! This is a wonderful poem!
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She Walks in Beauty
~Lord Byron (f) She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! |
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That quote was also in the movie GI Jane |
To Be In Love
To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well. You look at things Through his eyes. A cardinal is red. A sky is blue. Suddenly you know he knows too. He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather. His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much to bear. You cannot look in his eyes Because your pulse must not say What must not be said. When he Shuts a door- Is not there_ Your arms are water. And you are free With a ghastly freedom. You are the beautiful half Of a golden hurt. You remember and covet his mouth To touch, to whisper on. Oh when to declare Is certain Death! Oh when to apprize Is to mesmerize, To see fall down, the Column of Gold, Into the commonest ash. --Gwendolyn Brooks |
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