Written by
Erica Jong |
Smoke, it is all smoke
in the throat of eternity.
.
.
.
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
on their spiky brooms
cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,
as they flew over rooftops
blessing & cursing their
kind.
We banished & burned them
making them smoke in the throat of god;
we declared ourselves
"enlightened.
"
"The dark age of horrors is past,"
said my mother to me in 1952,
seven years after our people went up in smoke,
leaving a few teeth, a pile of bones.
The smoke curls and beckons.
It is blue & lavender
& green as the undersea world.
It will take us, too.
O let us not go sheepishly
clinging to our nakedness.
But let us go like witches sucked heavenward
by the Goddess' powerful breath
& whistling, whistling, whistling
on our beautiful brooms.
|
Written by
Matthew Arnold |
1 Faster, faster,
2 O Circe, Goddess,
3 Let the wild, thronging train
4 The bright procession
5 Of eddying forms,
6 Sweep through my soul!
7 Thou standest, smiling
8 Down on me! thy right arm,
9 Lean'd up against the column there,
10 Props thy soft cheek;
11 Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
12 The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
13 I held but now.
14 Is it, then, evening
15 So soon? I see, the night-dews,
16 Cluster'd in thick beads, dim
17 The agate brooch-stones
18 On thy white shoulder;
19 The cool night-wind, too,
20 Blows through the portico,
21 Stirs thy hair, Goddess,
22 Waves thy white robe!
Circe.
23 Whence art thou, sleeper?
The Youth.
24 When the white dawn first
25 Through the rough fir-planks
26 Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
27 Up at the valley-head,
28 Came breaking, Goddess!
29 I sprang up, I threw round me
30 My dappled fawn-skin;
31 Passing out, from the wet turf,
32 Where they lay, by the hut door,
33 I snatch'd up my vine-crown, my fir-staff,
34 All drench'd in dew-
35 Came swift down to join
36 The rout early gather'd
37 In the town, round the temple,
38 Iacchus' white fane
39 On yonder hill.
40 Quick I pass'd, following
41 The wood-cutters' cart-track
42 Down the dark valley;-I saw
43 On my left, through the beeches,
44 Thy palace, Goddess,
45 Smokeless, empty!
46 Trembling, I enter'd; beheld
47 The court all silent,
48 The lions sleeping,
49 On the altar this bowl.
50 I drank, Goddess!
51 And sank down here, sleeping,
52 On the steps of thy portico.
Circe.
53 Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou?
54 Thou lovest it, then, my wine?
55 Wouldst more of it? See, how glows,
56 Through the delicate, flush'd marble,
57 The red, creaming liquor,
58 Strown with dark seeds!
59 Drink, thee! I chide thee not,
60 Deny thee not my bowl.
61 Come, stretch forth thy hand, thee-so!
62 Drink-drink again!
The Youth.
63 Thanks, gracious one!
64 Ah, the sweet fumes again!
65 More soft, ah me,
66 More subtle-winding
67 Than Pan's flute-music!
68 Faint-faint! Ah me,
69 Again the sweet sleep!
Circe.
70 Hist! Thou-within there!
71 Come forth, Ulysses!
72 Art tired with hunting?
73 While we range the woodland,
74 See what the day brings.
Ulysses.
75 Ever new magic!
76 Hast thou then lured hither,
77 Wonderful Goddess, by thy art,
78 The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,
79 Iacchus' darling-
80 Or some youth beloved of Pan,
81 Of Pan and the Nymphs?
82 That he sits, bending downward
83 His white, delicate neck
84 To the ivy-wreathed marge
85 Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves
86 That crown his hair,
87 Falling forward, mingling
88 With the dark ivy-plants--
89 His fawn-skin, half untied,
90 Smear'd with red wine-stains? Who is he,
91 That he sits, overweigh'd
92 By fumes of wine and sleep,
93 So late, in thy portico?
94 What youth, Goddess,-what guest
95 Of Gods or mortals?
Circe.
96 Hist! he wakes!
97 I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
98 Nay, ask him!
The Youth.
99 Who speaks' Ah, who comes forth
100 To thy side, Goddess, from within?
101 How shall I name him?
102 This spare, dark-featured,
103 Quick-eyed stranger?
104 Ah, and I see too
105 His sailor's bonnet,
106 His short coat, travel-tarnish'd,
107 With one arm bare!--
108 Art thou not he, whom fame
109 This long time rumours
110 The favour'd guest of Circe, brought by the waves?
111 Art thou he, stranger?
112 The wise Ulysses,
113 Laertes' son?
Ulysses.
114 I am Ulysses.
115 And thou, too, sleeper?
116 Thy voice is sweet.
117 It may be thou hast follow'd
118 Through the islands some divine bard,
119 By age taught many things,
120 Age and the Muses;
121 And heard him delighting
122 The chiefs and people
123 In the banquet, and learn'd his songs.
124 Of Gods and Heroes,
125 Of war and arts,
126 And peopled cities,
127 Inland, or built
128 By the gray sea.
-If so, then hail!
129 I honour and welcome thee.
The Youth.
130 The Gods are happy.
131 They turn on all sides
132 Their shining eyes,
133 And see below them
134 The earth and men.
135 They see Tiresias
136 Sitting, staff in hand,
137 On the warm, grassy
138 Asopus bank,
139 His robe drawn over
140 His old sightless head,
141 Revolving inly
142 The doom of Thebes.
143 They see the Centaurs
144 In the upper glens
145 Of Pelion, in the streams,
146 Where red-berried ashes fringe
147 The clear-brown shallow pools,
148 With streaming flanks, and heads
149 Rear'd proudly, snuffing
150 The mountain wind.
151 They see the Indian
152 Drifting, knife in hand,
153 His frail boat moor'd to
154 A floating isle thick-matted
155 With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants
156 And the dark cucumber.
157 He reaps, and stows them,
158 Drifting--drifting;--round him,
159 Round his green harvest-plot,
160 Flow the cool lake-waves,
161 The mountains ring them.
162 They see the Scythian
163 On the wide stepp, unharnessing
164 His wheel'd house at noon.
165 He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal--
166 Mares' milk, and bread
167 Baked on the embers;--all around
168 The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr'd
169 With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
170 And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
171 Sitting in his cart
172 He makes his meal; before him, for long miles,
173 Alive with bright green lizards,
174 And the springing bustard-fowl,
175 The track, a straight black line,
176 Furrows the rich soil; here and there
177 Cluster of lonely mounds
178 Topp'd with rough-hewn,
179 Gray, rain-blear'd statues, overpeer
180 The sunny waste.
181 They see the ferry
182 On the broad, clay-laden
183 Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon,
184 With snort and strain,
185 Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
186 The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
187 To either bow
188 Firm harness'd by the mane; a chief
189 With shout and shaken spear,
190 Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
191 The cowering merchants, in long robes,
192 Sit pale beside their wealth
193 Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
194 Of gold and ivory,
195 Of turquoise-earth and amethyst,
196 Jasper and chalcedony,
197 And milk-barred onyx-stones.
198 The loaded boat swings groaning
199 In the yellow eddies;
200 The Gods behold him.
201 They see the Heroes
202 Sitting in the dark ship
203 On the foamless, long-heaving
204 Violet sea.
205 At sunset nearing
206 The Happy Islands.
207 These things, Ulysses,
208 The wise bards, also
209 Behold and sing.
210 But oh, what labour!
211 O prince, what pain!
212 They too can see
213 Tiresias;--but the Gods,
214 Who give them vision,
215 Added this law:
216 That they should bear too
217 His groping blindness,
218 His dark foreboding,
219 His scorn'd white hairs;
220 Bear Hera's anger
221 Through a life lengthen'd
222 To seven ages.
223 They see the Centaurs
224 On Pelion:--then they feel,
225 They too, the maddening wine
226 Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain
227 They feel the biting spears
228 Of the grim Lapith?, and Theseus, drive,
229 Drive crashing through their bones; they feel
230 High on a jutting rock in the red stream
231 Alcmena's dreadful son
232 Ply his bow;--such a price
233 The Gods exact for song:
234 To become what we sing.
235 They see the Indian
236 On his mountain lake; but squalls
237 Make their skiff reel, and worms
238 In the unkind spring have gnawn
239 Their melon-harvest to the heart.
--They see
240 The Scythian: but long frosts
241 Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp,
242 Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
243 Like shadows forth in spring.
244 They see the merchants
245 On the Oxus stream;--but care
246 Must visit first them too, and make them pale.
247 Whether, through whirling sand,
248 A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
249 Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
250 In the wall'd cities the way passes through,
251 Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,
252 On some great river's marge,
253 Mown them down, far from home.
254 They see the Heroes
255 Near harbour;--but they share
256 Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,
257 Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
258 Or where the echoing oars
259 Of Argo first
260 Startled the unknown sea.
261 The old Silenus
262 Came, lolling in the sunshine,
263 From the dewy forest-coverts,
264 This way at noon.
265 Sitting by me, while his Fauns
266 Down at the water-side
267 Sprinkled and smoothed
268 His drooping garland,
269 He told me these things.
270 But I, Ulysses,
271 Sitting on the warm steps,
272 Looking over the valley,
273 All day long, have seen,
274 Without pain, without labour,
275 Sometimes a wild-hair'd M?nad--
276 Sometimes a Faun with torches--
277 And sometimes, for a moment,
278 Passing through the dark stems
279 Flowing-robed, the beloved,
280 The desired, the divine,
281 Beloved Iacchus.
282 Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
283 Ah, glimmering water,
284 Fitful earth-murmur,
285 Dreaming woods!
286 Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling Goddess,
287 And thou, proved, much enduring,
288 Wave-toss'd Wanderer!
289 Who can stand still?
290 Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me--
291 The cup again!
292 Faster, faster,
293 O Circe, Goddess.
294 Let the wild, thronging train,
295 The bright procession
296 Of eddying forms,
297 Sweep through my soul!
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
(an ascetic poem for karen's birthday)
fancy having a birthday on a thursday
when you do the buying of the doughnuts
and others lick their sticky fingers
thinking good old karen letting
us share the eating of her birthday
not me of course - i sit at home (alone)
reflecting it is purification day
today and i do not have a doughnut
thank you karen for letting me have
a taste of self-denial on your birthday
and such a spiritual gain- in this way
you and i share the high-church position
while others lick the sugar off their lips
guzzling their souls away benightedly
with you great circe in your birthday play
luckily i have no envy of doughnuts
i sit here (alone) appreciating the pure
a step aside from doughy lust and greed
enjoying your birthday in its proper light
-a time of abstinence starvation longing
|
Written by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope |
He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
Rev.
22.
11
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Drivellers, snivellers, writers of bad verse,
Backbiting bitches, snipers from a pew,
Small turds from the great **** of self-esteem;
On such as these I would not waste my curse.
God send me soon the enemy or two
Fit for the wrath of God, of whom I dream:
Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd
Messiah of the Paranoiac State,
Some Educator wallowing in his slime,
Some Prophet of the Uncreating Word
Monsters a man might reasonably hate,
Masters of Progress, Leaders of our Time;
But chiefly the Suborners: Common Tout
And Punk, the Advertiser, him I mean
And his smooth hatchet-man, the Technocrat.
Them let my malediction single out,
These modern Dives with their talking screen
Who lick the sores of Lazarus and grow fat,
Licensed to pimp, solicit and procure
Here in my house, to foul my feast, to bawl
Their wares while I am talking with my friend,
To pour into my ears a public sewer
Of all the Strumpet Muses sell and all
That prostituted science has to vend.
In this great Sodom of a world, which turns
The treasure of the Intellect to dust
And every gift to some perverted use,
What wonder if the human spirit learns
Recourses of despair or of disgust,
Abortion, suicide and self-abuse.
But let me laugh, Lord; let me crack and strain
The belly of this derision till it burst;
For I have seen too much, have lived too long
A citizen of Sodom to refrain,
And in the stye of Science, from the first,
Have watched the pearls of Circe drop on dung.
Let me not curse my children, nor in rage
Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor,
Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold
To turn on the Despoilers all their age
Invents: damnations never felt before
And hells more horrible than hot and cold.
And, since in Heaven creatures purified
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds
Contemplate God and see Him face to face
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified,
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds
Mirror their own corruption and disgrace.
Now let this curse fall on my enemies
My enemies, Lord, but all mankind's as well
Prophets and panders of their golden calf;
Let Justice fit them all in their degrees;
Let them, still living, know that state of hell,
And let me see them perish, Lord, and laugh.
Let them be glued to television screens
Till their minds fester and the trash they see
Worm their dry hearts away to crackling shells;
Let ends be so revenged upon their means
That all that once was human grows to be
A flaccid mass of phototropic cells;
Let the dog love his vomit still, the swine
Squelch in the slough; and let their only speech
Be Babel; let the specious lies they bred
Taste on their tongues like intellectual wine
Let sung commercials surfeit them, till each
Goggles with nausea in his nauseous bed.
And, lest with them I learn to gibber and gloat,
Lead me, for Sodom is my city still,
To seek those hills in which the heart finds ease;
Give Lot his leave; let Noah build his boat,
And me and mine, when each has laughed his fill,
View thy damnation and depart in peace.
|
Written by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope |
He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
Rev.
22.
11
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Drivellers, snivellers, writers of bad verse,
Backbiting bitches, snipers from a pew,
Small turds from the great **** of self-esteem;
On such as these I would not waste my curse.
God send me soon the enemy or two
Fit for the wrath of God, of whom I dream:
Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd
Messiah of the Paranoiac State,
Some Educator wallowing in his slime,
Some Prophet of the Uncreating Word
Monsters a man might reasonably hate,
Masters of Progress, Leaders of our Time;
But chiefly the Suborners: Common Tout
And Punk, the Advertiser, him I mean
And his smooth hatchet-man, the Technocrat.
Them let my malediction single out,
These modern Dives with their talking screen
Who lick the sores of Lazarus and grow fat,
Licensed to pimp, solicit and procure
Here in my house, to foul my feast, to bawl
Their wares while I am talking with my friend,
To pour into my ears a public sewer
Of all the Strumpet Muses sell and all
That prostituted science has to vend.
In this great Sodom of a world, which turns
The treasure of the Intellect to dust
And every gift to some perverted use,
What wonder if the human spirit learns
Recourses of despair or of disgust,
Abortion, suicide and self-abuse.
But let me laugh, Lord; let me crack and strain
The belly of this derision till it burst;
For I have seen too much, have lived too long
A citizen of Sodom to refrain,
And in the stye of Science, from the first,
Have watched the pearls of Circe drop on dung.
Let me not curse my children, nor in rage
Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor,
Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold
To turn on the Despoilers all their age
Invents: damnations never felt before
And hells more horrible than hot and cold.
And, since in Heaven creatures purified
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds
Contemplate God and see Him face to face
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified,
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds
Mirror their own corruption and disgrace.
Now let this curse fall on my enemies
My enemies, Lord, but all mankind's as well
Prophets and panders of their golden calf;
Let Justice fit them all in their degrees;
Let them, still living, know that state of hell,
And let me see them perish, Lord, and laugh.
Let them be glued to television screens
Till their minds fester and the trash they see
Worm their dry hearts away to crackling shells;
Let ends be so revenged upon their means
That all that once was human grows to be
A flaccid mass of phototropic cells;
Let the dog love his vomit still, the swine
Squelch in the slough; and let their only speech
Be Babel; let the specious lies they bred
Taste on their tongues like intellectual wine
Let sung commercials surfeit them, till each
Goggles with nausea in his nauseous bed.
And, lest with them I learn to gibber and gloat,
Lead me, for Sodom is my city still,
To seek those hills in which the heart finds ease;
Give Lot his leave; let Noah build his boat,
And me and mine, when each has laughed his fill,
View thy damnation and depart in peace.
|
Written by
Ezra Pound |
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit.
And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine.
I slept in Crice's ingle.
"Going down the long ladder unguarded,
"I fell against the buttress,
"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
"But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
"And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.
"
And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
"A second time? why? man of ill star,
"Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
"Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
"For soothsay.
"
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: "Odysseus
"Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
"Lose all companions.
" Then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus.
I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outwards and away
And unto Crice.
Venerandam,
In the Cretan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden
Girdle and breat bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia.
So that:
|
Written by
Matthew Arnold |
The Youth
Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,
Lean'd up against the column there,
Props thy soft cheek;
Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
I held but now.
Is it, then, evening
So soon? I see, the night-dews,
Cluster'd in thick beads, dim
The agate brooch-stones
On thy white shoulder;
The cool night-wind, too,
Blows through the portico,
Stirs thy hair, Goddess,
Waves thy white robe!
Circe.
Whence art thou, sleeper?
The Youth.
When the white dawn first
Through the rough fir-planks
Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
Up at the valley-head,
Came breaking, Goddess!
I sprang up, I threw round me
My dappled fawn-skin;
Passing out, from the wet turf,
Where they lay, by the hut door,
I snatch'd up my vine-crown, my fir-staff,
All drench'd in dew-
Came swift down to join
The rout early gather'd
In the town, round the temple,
Iacchus' white fane
On yonder hill.
Quick I pass'd, following
The wood-cutters' cart-track
Down the dark valley;-I saw
On my left, through the beeches,
Thy palace, Goddess,
Smokeless, empty!
Trembling, I enter'd; beheld
The court all silent,
The lions sleeping,
On the altar this bowl.
I drank, Goddess!
And sank down here, sleeping,
On the steps of thy portico.
Circe.
Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou?
Thou lovest it, then, my wine?
Wouldst more of it? See, how glows,
Through the delicate, flush'd marble,
The red, creaming liquor,
Strown with dark seeds!
Drink, thee! I chide thee not,
Deny thee not my bowl.
Come, stretch forth thy hand, thee-so!
Drink-drink again!
The Youth.
Thanks, gracious one!
Ah, the sweet fumes again!
More soft, ah me,
More subtle-winding
Than Pan's flute-music!
Faint-faint! Ah me,
Again the sweet sleep!
Circe.
Hist! Thou-within there!
Come forth, Ulysses!
Art tired with hunting?
While we range the woodland,
See what the day brings.
Ulysses.
Ever new magic!
Hast thou then lured hither,
Wonderful Goddess, by thy art,
The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,
Iacchus' darling-
Or some youth beloved of Pan,
Of Pan and the Nymphs?
That he sits, bending downward
His white, delicate neck
To the ivy-wreathed marge
Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves
That crown his hair,
Falling forward, mingling
With the dark ivy-plants--
His fawn-skin, half untied,
Smear'd with red wine-stains? Who is he,
That he sits, overweigh'd
By fumes of wine and sleep,
So late, in thy portico?
What youth, Goddess,-what guest
Of Gods or mortals?
Circe.
Hist! he wakes!
I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
Nay, ask him!
The Youth.
Who speaks' Ah, who comes forth
To thy side, Goddess, from within?
How shall I name him?
This spare, dark-featured,
Quick-eyed stranger?
Ah, and I see too
His sailor's bonnet,
His short coat, travel-tarnish'd,
With one arm bare!--
Art thou not he, whom fame
This long time rumours
The favour'd guest of Circe, brought by the waves?
Art thou he, stranger?
The wise Ulysses,
Laertes' son?
Ulysses.
I am Ulysses.
And thou, too, sleeper?
Thy voice is sweet.
It may be thou hast follow'd
Through the islands some divine bard,
By age taught many things,
Age and the Muses;
And heard him delighting
The chiefs and people
In the banquet, and learn'd his songs.
Of Gods and Heroes,
Of war and arts,
And peopled cities,
Inland, or built
By the gray sea.
-If so, then hail!
I honour and welcome thee.
The Youth.
The Gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes,
And see below them
The earth and men.
They see Tiresias
Sitting, staff in hand,
On the warm, grassy
Asopus bank,
His robe drawn over
His old sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.
They see the Centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams,
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow pools,
With streaming flanks, and heads
Rear'd proudly, snuffing
The mountain wind.
They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moor'd to
A floating isle thick-matted
With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps, and stows them,
Drifting--drifting;--round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves,
The mountains ring them.
They see the Scythian
On the wide stepp, unharnessing
His wheel'd house at noon.
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal--
Mares' milk, and bread
Baked on the embers;--all around
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr'd
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
Sitting in his cart
He makes his meal; before him, for long miles,
Alive with bright green lizards,
And the springing bustard-fowl,
The track, a straight black line,
Furrows the rich soil; here and there
Cluster of lonely mounds
Topp'd with rough-hewn,
Gray, rain-blear'd statues, overpeer
The sunny waste.
They see the ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm harness'd by the mane; a chief
With shout and shaken spear,
Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
The cowering merchants, in long robes,
Sit pale beside their wealth
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
Of gold and ivory,
Of turquoise-earth and amethyst,
Jasper and chalcedony,
And milk-barred onyx-stones.
The loaded boat swings groaning
In the yellow eddies;
The Gods behold him.
They see the Heroes
Sitting in the dark ship
On the foamless, long-heaving
Violet sea.
At sunset nearing
The Happy Islands.
These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards, also
Behold and sing.
But oh, what labour!
O prince, what pain!
They too can see
Tiresias;--but the Gods,
Who give them vision,
Added this law:
That they should bear too
His groping blindness,
His dark foreboding,
His scorn'd white hairs;
Bear Hera's anger
Through a life lengthen'd
To seven ages.
They see the Centaurs
On Pelion:--then they feel,
They too, the maddening wine
Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain
They feel the biting spears
Of the grim Lapith?, and Theseus, drive,
Drive crashing through their bones; they feel
High on a jutting rock in the red stream
Alcmena's dreadful son
Ply his bow;--such a price
The Gods exact for song:
To become what we sing.
They see the Indian
On his mountain lake; but squalls
Make their skiff reel, and worms
In the unkind spring have gnawn
Their melon-harvest to the heart.
--They see
The Scythian: but long frosts
Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp,
Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
Like shadows forth in spring.
They see the merchants
On the Oxus stream;--but care
Must visit first them too, and make them pale.
Whether, through whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the wall'd cities the way passes through,
Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,
On some great river's marge,
Mown them down, far from home.
They see the Heroes
Near harbour;--but they share
Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,
Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
Or where the echoing oars
Of Argo first
Startled the unknown sea.
The old Silenus
Came, lolling in the sunshine,
From the dewy forest-coverts,
This way at noon.
Sitting by me, while his Fauns
Down at the water-side
Sprinkled and smoothed
His drooping garland,
He told me these things.
But I, Ulysses,
Sitting on the warm steps,
Looking over the valley,
All day long, have seen,
Without pain, without labour,
Sometimes a wild-hair'd M?nad--
Sometimes a Faun with torches--
And sometimes, for a moment,
Passing through the dark stems
Flowing-robed, the beloved,
The desired, the divine,
Beloved Iacchus.
Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
Ah, glimmering water,
Fitful earth-murmur,
Dreaming woods!
Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling Goddess,
And thou, proved, much enduring,
Wave-toss'd Wanderer!
Who can stand still?
Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me--
The cup again!
Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess.
Let the wild, thronging train,
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
|
Written by
Erica Jong |
You open to me
a little,
then grow afraid
and close again,
a small boy
fearing to be hurt,
a toe stubbed
in the dark,
a finger cut
on paper.
I think I am free
of fears,
enraptured, abandoned
to the call
of the Bacchae,
my own siren,
tied to my own
mast,
both Circe
and her swine.
But I too
am afraid:
I know where
life leads.
The impulse
to join,
to confess all,
is followed
by the impulse
to renounce,
and love--
imperishable love--
must die,
in order
to be reborn.
We come
to each other
tentatively,
veterans of other
wars,
divorce warrants
in our hands
which we would beat
into blossoms.
But blossoms
will not withstand
our beatings.
We come
to each other
with hope
in our hands--
the very thing
Pandora kept
in her casket
when all the ills
and woes of the world
escaped.
|
Written by
Conrad Aiken |
He
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window.
Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.
She
The sun goes down,—but without lamentation.
I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensation
In this, at least, grows clear to me:
Beauty is a word that has no meaning.
Beauty is naught to me.
He
The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,
Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.
The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloud
Seems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.
The raindrop finds its way to the heart of the leaf-bud.
But no word finds its way to the heart of you.
She
This also is clear in the stream of my sensation:
That I am content, for the moment, Let me be.
How light the new grass looks with the rain-dust on it!
But heart is a word that has no meaning,
Heart means nothing to me.
He
To the end of the world I pass and back again
In flights of the mind; yet always find you here,
Remote, pale, unattached .
.
.
O Circe-too-clear-eyed,
Watching amused your fawning tiger-thoughts,
Your wolves, your grotesque apes—relent, relent!
Be less wary for once: it is the evening.
She
But if I close my eyes what howlings greet me!
Do not persuade.
Be tranquil.
Here is flesh
With all its demons.
Take it, sate yourself.
But leave my thoughts to me.
|
Written by
Horace |
The pleasures of Lucretilis
Tempt Faunus from his Grecian seat;
He keeps my little goats in bliss
Apart from wind, and rain, and heat.
In safety rambling o'er the sward
For arbutes and for thyme they peer,
The ladies of the unfragrant lord,
Nor vipers, green with venom, fear,
Nor savage wolves, of Mars' own breed,
My Tyndaris, while Ustica's dell
Is vocal with the silvan reed,
And music thrills the limestone fell.
Heaven is my guardian; Heaven approves
A blameless life, by song made sweet;
Come hither, and the fields and groves
Their horn shall empty at your feet.
Here, shelter'd by a friendly tree,
In Teian measures you shall sing
Bright Circe and Penelope,
Love-smitten both by one sharp sting.
Here shall you quaff beneath the shade
Sweet Lesbian draughts that injure none,
Nor fear lest Mars the realm invade
Of Semele's Thyonian son,
Lest Cyrus on a foe too weak
Lay the rude hand of wild excess,
His passion on your chaplet wreak,
Or spoil your undeserving dress.
|