Written by
Raymond Carver |
And all at length are gathered in.
--LOUISE BOGAN
By the time I came around to feeling pain
and woke up, moonlight
flooded the room.
My arm lay paralyzed,
propped up like an old anchor under
your back.
You were in a dream,
you said later, where you'd arrived
early for the dance.
But after
a moment's anxiety you were okay
because it was really a sidewalk
sale, and the shoes you were wearing,
or not wearing, were fine for that.
*
"Help me," I said.
And tried to hoist
my arm.
But it just lay there, aching,
unable to rise on its own.
Even after
you said, "What is it? What's wrong?"
it stayed put -- deaf, unmoved
by any expression of fear or amazement.
We shouted at it, and grew afraid
when it didn't answer.
"It's gone to sleep,"
I said, and hearing those words
knew how absurd this was.
But
I couldn't laugh.
Somehow,
between the two of us, we managed
to raise it.
This can't be my arm
is what I kept thinking as
we thumped it, squeezed it, and
prodded it back to life.
Shook it
until that stinging went away.
We said a few words to each other.
I don't remember what.
Whatever
reassuring things people
who love each other say to each other
given the hour and such odd
circumstance.
I do remember
you remarked how it was light
enough in the room that you could see
circles under my eyes.
You said I needed more regular sleep,
and I agreed.
Each of us went
to the bathroom, and climbed back into bed
on our respective sides.
Pulled the covers up.
"Good night,"
you said, for the second time that night.
And fell asleep.
Maybe
into that same dream, or else another.
*
I lay until daybreak, holding
both arms fast across my chest.
Working my fingers now and then.
While my thoughts kept circling
around and around, but always going back
where they'd started from.
That one inescapable fact: even while
we undertake this trip,
there's another, far more bizarre,
we still have to make.
|
Written by
Anais Nin |
"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of eating Jesus's flesh and drinking His blood that I couldn't swallow the host well, and I dreaded harming the it.
I visualized Christ descending into my heart so realistically (I was a realist then!) that I could see Him walking down the stairs and entering the room of my heart like a sacred Visitor.
That state of this room was a subject of great preoccupation for me.
.
.
At the ages of nine, ten, eleven, I believe I approximated sainthood.
And then, at sixteen, resentful of controls, disillusioned with a God who had not granted my prayers (the return of my father), who performed no miracles, who left me fatherless in a strange country, I rejected all Catholicism with exaggeration.
Goodness, virtue, charity, submission, stifled me.
I took up the words of Lawrence: "They stress only pain, sacrifice, suffering and death.
They do not dwell enough on the resurrection, on joy and life in the present.
" Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight, I feel that it interferes with my present life, that it must be the cause for this withdrawal, this closing of doors.
.
.
I am embalmed because a nun leaned over me, enveloped me in her veils, kissed me.
The chill curse of Christianity.
I do not confess any more, I have no remorse, yet am I doing penance for my enjoyments? Nobody knows what a magnificent prey I was for Christian legends, because of my compassion and my tenderness for human beings.
Today it divides me from enjoyment in life.
"
p.
70-71
"As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth.
A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes.
Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman.
I had never seen her until last night.
Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth.
She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever.
Her beauty drowned me.
As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me.
Henry suddenly faded.
She was color and brilliance and strangeness.
By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power.
She killed my admiration by her talk.
Her talk.
The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing.
She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience.
Her role alone preoccupies her.
She invents dramas in which she always stars.
I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose.
That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be.
She is an actress every moment.
I cannot grasp the core of June.
Everything Henry has said about her is true.
"
I wanted to run out and kiss her fanatastic beauty and say: 'June, you have killed my sincerity too.
I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want.
Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me.
You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you.
When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me.
Deep down, I am not different from you.
I dreamed you, I wished for your existance.
You are the woman I want to be.
I see in you that part of me which is you.
I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you.
I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses"
|
Written by
Rupert Brooke |
Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,
Struck certain magic strains.
Ears satiate
With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,
Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice
And serene unterrance of old.
We heard
-- With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams
Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake --
The odorous, amorous style of poetry,
The melancholy knocking of those lines,
The long, low soughing of pentameters,
-- Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry --
And the innumerable truant polysyllables
Multitudinously twittering like a bee.
Fulfilled our hearts were with the music then,
And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn,
And all the lovers heard it from all the trees.
All of the accents upon the all the norms!
-- And ah! the stress of the penultimate!
We never knew blank verse could have such feet.
Where is it now? Oh, more than ever, now
I sometimes think no poetry is read
Save where some sepultured C?sura bled,
Royally incarnadining all the line.
Is the imperial iamb laid to rest,
And the young trochee, having done enough?
Ah! turn again! Sing so to us, who are sick
Of seeming-simple rhymes, bizarre emotions,
Decked in the simple verses of the day,
Infinite meaning in a little gloom,
Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular,
Modern despair in antique metres, myths
Incomprehensible at evening,
And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn.
The slow lines swell.
The new style sighs.
The Celt
Moans round with many voices.
God! to see
Gaunt anap?sts stand up out of the verse,
Combative accents, stress where no stress should be,
Spondee on spondee, iamb on choriamb,
The thrill of all the tribrachs in the world,
And all the vowels rising to the E!
To hear the blessed mutter of those verbs,
Conjunctions passionate toward each other's arms,
And epithets like amaranthine lovers
Stretching luxuriously to the stars,
All prouder pronouns than the dawn, and all
The thunder of the trumpets of the noun!
|
Written by
Victor Hugo |
You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.
So that's the foreground.
An old chapel adds
Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it
A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes;
Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes,
They carp at every gust that stirs them up.
At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow
Is rusting; and before me lies the vast
Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue;
Cocks and hens spread their gildings, and converse
Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics,
Now and then, toss me songs in dialect.
In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker;
The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes
Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff.
I like these waters where the wild gale scuds;
All day the country tempts me to go strolling;
The little village urchins, book in hand,
Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging),
As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off.
The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant
Soft noise of children spelling things aloud.
The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you!
Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live:
Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed
My days, and think of you, my lady fair!
I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times,
Sailing across the high seas in its pride,
Over the gables of the tranquil village,
Some winged ship which is traveling far away,
Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds.
Lately it slept in port beside the quay.
Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge:
No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives,
Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters,
Nor importunity of sinister birds.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Three gentlemen live close beside me --
A painter of pictures bizarre,
A poet whose virtues might guide me,
A singer who plays the guitar;
And there on my lintel is Cupid;
I leave my door open, and yet
These gentlemen, aren't they stupid!
They never make love to Babette.
I go to the shop every morning;
I work with my needle and thread;
Silk, satin and velvet adorning,
Then luncheon on coffee and bread.
Then sewing and sewing till seven;
Or else, if the order I get,
I toil and I toil till eleven --
And such is the day of Babette.
It doesn't seem cheerful, I fancy;
The wage is unthinkably small;
And yet there is one thing I can say:
I keep a bright face through it all.
I chaff though my head may be aching;
I sing a gay song to forget;
I laugh though my heart may be breaking --
It's all in the life of Babette.
That gown, O my lady of leisure,
You begged to be "finished in haste.
"
It gives you an exquisite pleasure,
Your lovers remark on its taste.
Yet .
.
.
oh, the poor little white faces,
The tense midnight toil and the fret .
.
.
I fear that the foam of its laces
Is salt with the tears of Babette.
It takes a brave heart to be cheery
With no gleam of hope in the sky;
The future's so utterly dreary,
I'm laughing -- in case I should cry.
And if, where the gay lights are glowing,
I dine with a man I have met,
And snatch a bright moment -- who's going
To blame a poor little Babette?
And you, Friend beyond all the telling,
Although you're an ocean away,
Your pictures, they tell me, are selling,
You're married and settled, they say.
Such happiness one wouldn't barter;
Yet, oh, do you never regret
The Springtide, the roses, Montmartre,
Youth, poverty, love and -- Babette?
That blond-haired chap across the way
With sunny smile and voice so mellow,
He sings in some cheap cabaret,
Yet what a gay and charming fellow!
His breath with garlic may be strong,
What matters it? his laugh is jolly;
His day he gives to sleep and song:
His night's made up of song and folly.
|
Written by
Ntozake Shange |
at 4:30 AM
she rose
movin the arms & legs that trapped her
she sighed affirmin the sculptured man
& made herself a bath
of dark musk oil egyptian crystals
& florida water to remove his smell
to wash away the glitter
to watch the butterflies melt into
suds & the rhinestones fall beneath
her buttocks like smooth pebbles
in a missouri creek
layin in water
she became herself
ordinary
brown braided woman
with big legs & full hips
reglar
seriously intendin to finish her
night's work
she quickly walked to her guest
straddled on her pillows & began
æyou'll have to go now /
i've
a lot of work to do / & i
cant
with a man around / here
are yr pants /
there's coffee on the
stove / it's been
very nice / but i cant see
you again /
you got what you came
for / didnt you'
& she smiled
he wd either mumble curses bout crazy bitches
or sit dumbfounded
while she repeated
æi cdnt possibly wake up / with
a strange man in my bed / why
dont you go home'
she cda been slapped upside the head
or verbally challenged
but she never waz
& the ones who fell prey to the
dazzle of hips painted with
orange blossoms & magnolia scented wrists
had wanted no more
than to lay between her sparklin thighs
& had planned on leaving before dawn
& she had been so divine
devastatingly bizarre the way
her mouth fit round
& now she stood a
reglar colored girl
fulla the same malice
livid indifference as a sistah
worn from supportin a wd be hornplayer
or waiting by the window
& they knew
& left in a hurry
she wd gather her tinsel &
jewels from the tub
& laugh gayly or vengeful
she stored her silk roses by her bed
& when she finished writin
the account of her exploit in a diary
embroidered with lilies & moonstones
she placed the rose behind her ear
& cried herself to sleep.
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
up the ladder and round the bend
age spirals like a convolvulus
its bells break into the light
catching breath with their beauty
but how in the sightless earth
its roots work to a wise agenda
for all the seasonal pleasures
sun and open air afford us
we grow below more tightly
(knowing squeezed into essence)
till each pinch of inner space
networks our darkest truths
the convolvulus keeps climbing
probing wise tendrils into gaps
the sun still clings to - and finds
fresher vantage points to spell
its bright peals out - age stays young
turns its patterns into poems
flowers are to ring out loud
what roots keep tight about
and up the ladder round the bend
dances stately or bizarre
measure the joy of living
how lightly we twine or twist
they trumpet to the stars
and we are stretched ourselves
between the fixed earth and
the sky's impossible dimensions
such a step we have to make
to keep in tune with both
age brings the calm to do it
our plant has been spaced out
into its true proportions
nothing has to boast to let
its grace show - content to be
up the ladder and round the bend
|
Written by
John Berryman |
Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared,
inapprehensible his studies grew,
nourished he less & less
his subject body with good food & rest,
something bizarre about Henry, slowly sheared
off, unlike you & you,
smaller & smaller, till in question stood
his eyeteeth and one block of memories
These were enough for him
implying commands from upstairs & from down,
Walt's 'orbic flex,' triads of Hegel would
incorporate, if you please,
into the know-how of the American bard
embarrassed Henry heard himself a-being,
and the younger Stephen Crane
of a powerful memory, of pain,
these stood the ancestors, relaxed & hard,
whilst Henry's parts were fleeing.
|